LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.? 



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[united states of America.! 






I 



REASONS 



FOR MY HOPE. 



BY H. L. HASTINGS. 

AUTHOR OF THE GREAT CONTROVERSY BETWEEN GOD AND MAN, 



" But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts ; and be ready always to 
give an answer to every man that asketh a reason of the hope that is in 
you with meekness and fear." — 1 Pet. iii : 15. 



\ \ 



PROVIDENCE, R. L: 

PUBLISHED BY H. L. HASTINGS, 43 WEYBOSSET STREET. 

New York: G. W. Young, 138 William Street. 

Boston ; Miles Grant, 167 Hanover st. 

I860. 



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Cfcl*- S 



^ 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, 

by IT. L. HASTINGS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 

State of Rhode Island, 



DEDICATION 



TO 



™iu £ S l W -° fi yet have n0 ho P e > and are without God in the 
fltl /i P t i 12 .'~ whose ho P e is destroyed when death over- 
waIm -S 5 Job . x,v = 19--and perisheth when they leave this 
« oriel : Prov. xi : V,— who say, who will show us any good ? 
rt£'i b '— and . wh °. m candor and honesty, desire a reason of 
the hope that is in me. 1 Pet. iii : 15. 

TO 

_ All those who are called in one hope of their calling ; Eph 

Znr'f f'~p W i •- S n their hope i0 God ' and have hoped in his 
word Ps. lxxvm : 7. cxix : 74, 147,--believing that whatso- 

tl—nTr ^ Wn i ten ' 7 ere written for our Iearni nS, that wo, 
though patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope 

On! i 97 4 '- wh0 . h ave Christ in them, the hope of glory 

£lvationh a Ther s ^r PUt ^ ** " " ^ ^ °< 

TO 

in ™, Wh ^ are re J° ici ?g in h °P°' P atient in tribulation, instant 
loneTr ■ * m ' ?Jl 12 '- wh0 - if in this life only, they had 
hope in Christ, would be of all men most miserable ; 1 Cor, xv : 

r«.Hon J^l T 5 01 ? 6 t0Ward God that there s hall be a resur- 
called toL\ 6 dead ' J, ust and nnjust; Acts xxiv : 15,-who, if 
called to die, have yet hope in their death ; Prov. xiv : 32 —and 
whose flesh can rest in hope ; Ps. xvi : 9 -who are not igno- 

who W^T g then } £?* are - aslee P' and wh0 sorrow not as those 
w no have no hope. 1 Thess. iv : 13. 

iusTified'lwr.v 6 SaV6d by , h °P e; Eoni. viii : 24,-who being 
ife • Tiul ^ l gtaC f' are heirs ac cording to the hope of eternal 
Rom v 9 \'~T h -u r , e ^ ice in h °P e of the S lor y of God; 
experien^ 7Z T ^k^cn worketh patience, and patience 
S v A ,T ien , Ce h °P e - which maketh not ashamed; 
tl h hnl; tn ( ° h f Ve h0p . e , ° f bein - like 0hrist > and . having 
John T: 1-4 ' 7 pUr ' fy tfaemse lves even as he is pure. 1 

TO 

sha^Kn! Z e sober and hope unto the end, for the grace that 
Pet i. iq ght > Unt ° them at the appearing of Jesus Christ ; 1 
(WlwfctiTTi T n °^ m0Ved awa y frora the hope of the 
fort P hattp= , iu Y have heard; Col. i : 23,-who are looking 
tor that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great 



IT DEDICATION. 

God and our Saviour Jesus Christ ; Titus ii : 13, — whose hope 
while it is deferred, maketh the heart sick ; but whose desire when 
it cometh shall be a tree of life ; Pro v. xiii : 12, — which hope 
they have as an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast, and 
which entereth into that within the veil. Heb. vi : 19. 

TO 
The God of hope, who fills us with peace in believing, that we 
may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit ; Kom. 
xv : 13, — who is the hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in time 
of trouble; Jer. xiv : 8, — who hath begotten us again unto a 
lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead ; 
1 Pet. i : 13, — who hath given us everlasting consolation and 
good hope through grace ; 2 Thess. ii : 16, — and to the Lord 
Jesus Christ who is our hope ; 1 Tim. i : 1, — and whom the 
Father raised from the dead, and gave him honor and glory, that 
our faith and hope might be in Crod. 1 Pet. i : 22 : 

THESE PAGES, 

Written by one, who, seeing he has such hope, has used great 
plainness of speech ; 2 Cor. iii : 12, — and whose prayer is, " Up- 
hold thou me according unto thy word that I may live : and let 
me not be ashamed of my hope, (Ps. cxix : 116) 

WITH THE EARNEST DESIRE 

mjat 

Those who have no hope, may fly for refuge to lay hold upon 
the hope set before them ; Heb. vi : 18, — and turn to the strong- 
hold while they are yet prisoners of hope. Zech. ix : 12. 

Those who are called in one hope, may know what is the hope 
of his calling, and what is the riches of the glory of his inheritance 
in the saints. Eph. i : 18. 

God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ our Hope, may be 
honored by this feeble instrumentality, and may grant the bless- 
ings of the Eternal Spirit, upon the work and person of a servant 
so unprofitable, and a worshiper so unworthy as 

THE AUTHOR. 
Providence, B. I., Jan. 1, 1860: 



REASONS 

FOR THE HOPE THAT IS IN ME. 

BY H. L. HASTINGS. 

Hope is the anticipation of some desired object 
— the expectation of some real or supposed future 
good. It is the union of expectation and desire. 
Those troubles that we fear, are not objects of hope, 
neither are those good things which we have no 
expectation of ever receiving. It is true that the 
Greek word elpis not only signifies hope, and the 
object of hope, but also in later times, " any thought 
on the future, expectation, hoping, and also fear" 
but though the Apostles may sometimes use the 
word thus, yet this is not at all the usual sense. 
Hope, properly speaking, exists only where there 
is expectation and desire. 

Hope is a natural element in the human mind. 
A man in his normal condition always hopes. 
Without hope man would be a monster. The deep 
agony of a hopeless soul is comprised in one single 
word — " despaik." Well did honest John Bunyan 
personify him as one of the most mighty and furious 
foes of pilgrims who had wandered from the right 



6 Reasons 

path. Men will hope. The child hopes for boy- 
hood and its mirth; the boy for youth and its 
sports, the youth for manhood and its independence, 
the man for the riches and honors and dignity that 
may crown the toils of a life-time ; and then when 
every stage of life is past, still hope, though oft de- 
luding men through life, still points them onward 
to hills of light, which lie in supernal radiance be- 
yond the dark and sullen stream that chills their 
reluctant feet, or rolls its billows and its waves 
above their sinking heads. God has seen that 
men would hope for something, and so he has given 
them something to hope for ; — something worthy 
of their highest aspirations after all ideal and sha- 
dowy excellence. He has held out before them a 
hope. This hope, I trust, through his favor, has 
become my hope, and I desire to lay it before you, 
my reader, that you may know its excellence and 
be benefitted and blest by it as I have been. I 
shall, therefore, try to show you, first, what is not 
my hope, and then I shall tell you what it is, and 
shall finally endeavor to give you some of the rea- 
sons and evidences upon which I rest this hope. 
And I shall do this the more willingly because I 
have respect to that word which says, " But sanc- 
tify the Lord God in your hearts ; and be ready 
always to give an answer to every man that asketh 
you a reason of the hope that is in you, with meek- 
ness and fear." 1 Pet. iii : 15. 

The hope that I cherish, which is my joy in 



For the Hope that is in Me. 1 

sorrow, my light in darkness, and my well-spring 
of gladness in the hours of my earthly bitterness 
and woe, is, in its basis, its aims, and its objects, 
very different from the other hopes that animate 
the bosoms, and stimulate the efforts of mankind. 
It is wider in its reach, more grand and lofty in its 
objects, and more enduring in its basis than many 
of the hopes which men are taught to cherish here. 
T. The hope that I cherish is not the hope of 
worldly wealth. This hope is not well founded. 
No man can be certain of being rich, whatever 
course he may pursue. All cannot be rich. Some 
must be poor, and since many who become rich do 
so only by grasping and hoarding their own por- 
tion and that which rightfully belongs to a dozen 
or an hundred others, I cannot see that a hope of 
such riches can be really worth the cherishing. 
Then, as we are not certain of getting riches, those 
who do get them are not sure of keeping them. 
The millionaires of the day may be the beggars of 
to-morrow ; yea more, they may be rotting amid the 
darkness and corruption of the grave. Besides, I 
have never observed or learned that rich men are on 
the whole to be envied more than others. They are 
no wiser, healthier, or happier than many others. 
They cannot enjoy their food, or their raiment, or 
their rest — the gratifications of natural appetites, 
or of grand- and intellectual desires, better than 
many others who have not their wealth. Besides, 
wealth costs labor in getting, care in keeping, 



8 Reasons 

misery in wasting, penury in hoarding, and perdi- 
tion in loving it. No hope of such an uncertain 
and equivocal object as this can be worthy of my 
heart's longings. 

II. My hope is not a hope of worldly honors. 
These are for the few. Those that will have them 
pay dearly for them oft times, w r hen they buy them 
with the price of blood, of honor, of integrity, and 
mental peace. Worldly honors when gained, often 
prove sources of'sorrow and of pain. Laurels wither 
and fade ; thrones totter and fall ; rulers perish and 
pass away. Death bows the heads of emperors, 
beggars, kings, and slaves alike. Masters and sub- 
jects must lay aside the wreaths of honor and the 
chains of servitude, and each come to stand in sol- 
emn judgment before Almighty God at last. What 
are thrones and kingdoms, and honors, and offices, 
in view of the terrible majesty of that great God 
and that great day ! Surely no hope of such fleet- 
ing, perishing dignities should engross my soul's 
affections, or withdraw my heart from higher good. 

III. My hope is not a hope of worldly ease, 
pleasure, or enjoyment. What God gives of this, 
I accept with gladness. But I dare not make such 
things my hope. " The pleasures of sin" are but 
" for a season." Earthly joys are transient and un- 
certain. These radiant flowers are thickly set with 
thorns, and the coil of the hidden serpent is amid 
the clustering foliage. The cup of pleasure is 
sweet at first to the perverted taste, but it leaves 



For the Hope that is in Me. 9 

behind a bitterness that fills the soul with woe. 
And, ah ! how soon these joys dim when death's 
shadow falls upon them — how they fleet as the 
grave yawns before our feet. Such joys as these 
can never satisfy my soul. It pants for something 
better — something permanent as the promises of 
God, pure as the waters of salvation, and lasting 
as eternity. 

IV. My hope is not a hope of a long and pros- 
perous life in this world. Many who trust in this 
hope find it vain. My judgment tells me that I am 
passing away. All flesh is as grass. Our life is 
but a vapor that appeareth but for a little while, 
and then vanisheth away. Just so I have seen 
both clouds and men scattered and driven from 
mortal view. And sometimes, when sorrows ap- 
proach and days of darkness come, life seems long 
enough, yea, too long. With Job we cry " I loathe 
it ! I loathe it ! I would not live alway." When 
all else is changeful, why should I seek perma- 
nence ? Let me pass on with the ebbing tide of 
mortality, rather than remain to petrify beneath 
the afflictions that beset me, and stand in lonely iso- 
lation amid the wreck and ruin of all I loved. I 
cannot hope for long life while death knells are 
sounding in my ears, and all around me are passing 
in solemn procession onward to their resting places 
in the dark and silent sepulchre. I have no love 
of death — no sentimentality for martyrdom. I love 
the lustiness of vigorous health, but I dare not put 



10 Reasons 

my trust in a life which is drawn from a source so 
impure as that through which our life is derived. 
No ! my hope must pass beyond this life for its 
resting place — its sure and certain anchorage 
ground. 

V. My hope is not a hope of such a " good time 
coming/ 7 as is expected by many of the Infidels, 
Poets, Philanthropists, Philosophers, Spiritualists, 
and Divines of the present day and age. I see no 
tokens of it in the present oppression, wickedness 
and corruption of this world. I see no hope of it 
in the apathy, worldiness and pride of the profess- 
ing church. I see no portents of it in the godless 
intellectualism of the present generation. I see 
no omen of it in the hollow-hearted sycophancy 
that prevails on every side. I see no prospect of 
it in the fierceness of warlike nations who have 
made slaughter a science and bloodshed a glorious 
art. I see no indication of it in the unexampled 
collections of munitions for war, the unparalelled 
preparations for battle, the beating of ploughshares 
into swords, and of pruning hooks into spears, in 
making ready for scenes of carnage yet to come. 
I see no foreshadowing of it in the covetousness, 
the money worship, the mad lust for pelf and gold 
which seems to rule the hearts of men with all the 
malignity of a demon's sway. 

If I look to the past, the analogies and examples 
there seen give me no indications that progression 
to perfection is the course and destiny of man. 



For the Hope that is in Me. lx 

The facts of history are at war with such a theory. 
No nation or race has long gone steadily onward. 
All the kingdoms of antiquity have grown sinful 
and have faded away. All ancient governments 
have been degraded, broken or destroyed. The 
progress of the race has been irregular and often 
backward. So it continues. The evil heart is ever 
the same. " The works of the flesh" are now what 
they were when Paul described them. The broad 
road is still crowded by a thoughtless throng who 
tread the way of death. The sins of Sodom, 
and Egypt, and Jerusalem, are being reproduced 
daily before our eyes. How shall their imitators 
escape their doom ? 

If I turn to the word of God that " liveth and 
abideth forever," I find no promise of this " good 
time coming," within this present age, or day of 
grace. True, I see in the distant future a time 
when " all shall know the Lord," from the least 
unto the greatest, and the world shall be illumined 
with his light, and gladdened with his glory ; but 
it is beyond the times of vengeance, and judgment, 
and wrath, which are to fall like a whirlwind of 
fury upon the heads of the godless and the vile. But 
in this world, and during this age, " the wheat," and 
" the tares," the righteous and the wicked, are both 
to grow together " till the harvest," which is the 
completion of the age. Math, xiii : 30. In this 
world there is to exist that gigantic personification 
of iniquity." the man of sin," until the Lord shall 



12 Reasons 

consume him with the breath of his mouth and des- 
troy him with the outshining splendor of his com- 
ing. 2 Thess. ii : 8. There are to be scoffers even 
in the last days, saying, " where is the promise of 
his coming?' 7 2 Pet. iii : 3. The great net w T ill 
bring both good and bad to the shore, and the day 
of separation is the day of judgment. Math, xiii : 
47, 49. And that day does not dawn in the calm- 
ness of untroubled peace ; nay, it shall rather 
break in fury upon the rebellious and impious. It 
shall come, not on a converted but upon an ungod- 
ly world. It shall come like the ruin that came 
upon the antediluvians, the Sodomites, the Jews, 
and every other race that have stood out their 
allotted period of mercy and probation ; only the 
coming of this shall be more terrible than the com- 
ing of all before it combined. 

And since such is the doom of the world, as pre- 
dicted by those same prophets whose warnings of 
earth's past judgments have been so minutely, so 
literally, so circumstantially verified ; I dare not 
flatter myself that there are good times in store for 
earth until this dark and dire account is adjusted, 
until this great controversy between God and man 
is definitely and finally settled.* There is a gloomy 
cloud overhanging the world. There may be a rain- 
bow, and sunshine, and beauty in store, but we 

* For a full discussion of this important subject, the reader is referred to 
u The Great Controversy between God and Man ; Its origin, progress, and 
end. By H. L. Hastings.'* 1 Vol. 12mo. It may be obtained of the pub- 
lishers of the present work. 



For the Hope that is in Me. IS 

shall not behold it until those impending clouds 
have emptied out the fullness of their fury — not 
until those lightnings have glanced and those thun- 
ders have been uttered that shall tell of vengeance 
long deserved and long delayed, but breaking in at 
last with sudden and resistless power upon the 
heads of the ungodly. The storm will come. Are 
we hidden from its fury ? Are we in the rock 
which is cleft to hide us ? Are we " in Christ Je- 
sus" ? Reader : these are ^important questions. 
Let them be candidly considered and answered. 
Do not build upon the sand. Seek for the rock of 
strength. Look to Christ and to his word. Trust 
in his arm and in his promises. So shall you have 
a hope that is " like an anchor to the soul, sure and 
steadfast, reaching to that within the vail." Heb. 
vi : 19. 

VI. My hope is not a hope of escaping through 
death into some fancied spheres of progression, 
there to roam and wander without regard to Christ 
or his ways. My hope is not the hope of commu- 
nicating sublime nothings through the medium of 
pine tables, or infidel men and women, nor of finding 
in death that salvation which I refused to accept 
through Jesus Christ. To me, as to the apostles, 
death is an " enemy," and as such is to be destroy- 
ed. 1 Cor. xv : 26. To be ransomed " from his 
power" rather than to fall beneath it, is an object 
of desire ; and among the brilliant pictures of 
prophetic vision, few are more glorious than those 



14 Beasons 

that delineate the hour when death shall be " swal- 
lowed up in victory" — and when death, that came 
by sin, with him that had the power of death, that 
is the devil, shall yield to the conquering majesty 
of Christ the King of glory, " there shall be no 
more death, neither sorrow nor sighing." Hos. 
xiii : 14. Is. xxv : 8. Heb. ii : 14. Rev. xxi : 4. 
I am aware that many cherish such a hope as this, 
and believe that when dead they shall still mingle 
in all the busy activities of life. But of the dead I 
read " they know not anything . . . neither have they 
any more a portion forever in that which is done 
under the sun." " His sons come to honor and he 
understandeth it not, they are brought low and he 
perceiveth it not of them." Many are the scriptures 
that incline me to distrust such a hope. It rests 
upon an uncertain basis. It cannot be my hope. 
Eccl. ix : 4-6. Job xiv : 21. 

My hope, the hope that is in me, anchor-like and 
soul-sustaining, is based not upon phantoms, fables, 
lies or guesses, but upon such " immutable things" 
as the word and oath of the eternal God himself. 
It reaches for its objects beyond this mortal state, 
for " if in this life only we have hope in Christ we 
are of all men most miserable." 1 Cor. xv : 19. It 
is one of the great essentials of Christianity, for 
" now abideth faith, hope, and love." True, the 
greatest of these is love, but the least of these is 
greater than anything which the world can bestow. 
1 Cor. xiii : 13. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 15 

I shall now present some of the objects of my 
hope, and shall quote the very words of that scrip- 
ture upon which I base my joyful anticipations of 
the things revealed in the sacred word, and made 
sure through the divine promises. 

I. I have hope of possessing eternal life. " In 
hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie 
hath promised before the world began." * Titus i : 
2. " That being justified by his grace, we should 
be made heirs according to the hope of eternal 
life." Titus iii : 7. " The life that now is" is brief, 
uncertain, and in some respects burdensome. But 
whether we love it or loathe it we must part with 
it. Judgment has passed upon all men to condem- 
nation. All have sinned and come short of the 
glory of God. All are involved in the misfortune 
of a common mortality. Diseases prey upon man ; 
infirmities increase with advancing years ; a thou- 
sand casualties endanger his existence — life glides 
away from his grasp ; and death, stern and icy, 
comes in to close the scene. We all do fade as a 
leaf. We wither, droop and die. And when life 
is gone, what remains ? The wisdom of the wise, 
and the understanding of the prudent ; the might 
of the strong and the glory of the great, all find a 
period here. Our life is so short that we can learn 

* Pro chronon aionion, " Before the times of the ages." — Macknight. 
The ages are evidently the Jewish periods of time, and the promise was 
made before these, even to Abraham and to the early patriarchs — though 
of course it was not before the world began as there were no men to receive 
promises before that begun. 



16 Reasons 

but little and can do less. Life is the grand first 
thing without which nothing can be possessed, en- 
joyed, or accomplished. Hence God puts life as 
among the greatest blessings, and the loss of it as 
the greatest loss man can endure ; for it carries all 
other losses with it. So to prepare the way for the 
reception of all that the wealth of his love bestows 
he imparts life first, " The gift of God is eternal 
life." Rom. vi : 23. All scripture unites in declar- 
ing its excellency. " His favor is life." Christ is 
" the Resurrection and the life." " The life was 
the light of men." He had " the words of eternal 
life." These words received into the heart, be- 
come in us " a well of water springing up into 
everlasting life." " He that believeth on the Son 
hath everlasting life," and " We know that we 
have passed from death unto life because we love 
the brethren." 

But this life, though begun through faith, by the 
engrafting of that word which is "living and power- 
ful," and which " liveth and abideth forever," with- 
in the Christian's soul, is not yet revealed in all 
the glorious plenitude of its future perfection. "We 
are yet under sentence of death, yet in bondage to 
the law of death. " For ye are dead, and your life 
is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, there, 
fore, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye 
also appear with him in glory." Col. iii : 3, 4. 
Hence as the full manifestation of this life is re- 
served, as it is hid with Christ in God, it is a pro- 



For the Hope that is in Me. 17 

per object of hope. No mortal can bestow even 
temporal life, save in the mere acts of animal repro- 
duction. There is not enough of power, and wealth, 
and wisdom, and science, and experience, in this 
wide world to give life to a worm, a cricket, or a 
fly. Temporal life is from God — how much more 
so is " eternal life !" To Him in whom even now 
• we live, and move, and have our being/ 7 I look 
for the life that is to come. Upon the promises of 
' l the living Father," upon the strong assurances of 
,he Lord of life and glory, I securely rest "in 
flOPE of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, 
promised before the ages begun." 

I hope to live — To know the meaning of that word, 
" With long life will I satisfy him, and I will show 
him my salvation." I hope to live long enough ; 
not ten or twenty, or an hundred years, not thou- 
sands or tens of thousands or millions of ages, but 
to all eternity. Here we steer our barks amid the 
narrow channels and amid the threatening dangers 
of mortality and of death. I hope by and by to 
launch forth and lose sight of this dark, rockbound 
coast, and sail on the shoreless ocean of eternity 
amid the lifting up of its everlasting floods, and the 
sweet soundings of its gently heaving billows. I 
hope to live when time and sin, and sorrow and 
death and pain are done, and are fading from our 
view in the dim distance of the receding past, 
while eternal glory rolls in its floods of brightness 
on my enraptured soul. 



18 Reasons 

Our ideas of life are so small we can hardly grasp 
a larger life. Now we call a man old at eighty 
years ; then he shall be young at eighty millions. 
We part for a month or a year, doubting if we shall 
ever meet again, but then we can arrange to meet 
after an absence of fifty thousand years, and be 
sure no death shall overturn our calculations. The 
works we here begin, and then lay aside for a lit- 
tle while, we never have time to finish, but there 
if delayed ten thousand years by some trivial in- 
terruption, we can return to our work, our study, 
or our joy, and have no fear that our time is too 
short to do it justice. I hope for eternal life, for 
room enough, and time enough to gratify every 
longing of my heart. I, though a man of dust, a 
sinner saved by grace, have hope through Christ 
of a life such as mortals never have witnessed or 
enjoyed or comprehended. A life to which that 
of Methuselah should be infinitesimal, and that of 
Adam and Enoch should be but infancy. A life 
which shall keep pace with the unmeasured years 
of Deity — a life which shall soar aloft amid the 
countless periods of the infinite futurity — a life 
which shall abide in sublime and cloudless glory 
through all the ages of eternity. 

0, is not this a grand and lofty hope ? Can 
mortal man aspire so high ? Yes, " this is the 
record that God hath given unto us eternal life, 
and this life is in his Sox. He that hath the Son 
hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not 



For the Hope that is in Me. 19 

life." 1 John v : 11, 12. Perishing mortal, will you 
not seek this life ? Dying man, will you not " fight 
the good fight of faith," and " lay hold on eternal 
life ?" No other life is valuable, no other is secure. 
Seek that life and live forever more. 

II. I hope for full, and final, and eternal salva- 
tion. " But let us who are of the day be sober, 
putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and 
for an helmet the hope OF salvation. For God 
hath not appointed us unto wrath, but to obtain 
salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for 
us that, whether we wake or sleep we should, live 
together with him/ 7 1 Thess. v : 8-10. 

Salvation is deliverance or rescue. We all need 
to have deliverance from a thousand ills, and if we 
serve God he will finally deliver us. This salva- 
tion is already begun. We are saved through 
Christ even now, from the condemnation of past 
guilt : being freely and fully pardoned : from the 
dominion of present sin ; by being led to love 
righteousness and hate iniquity : from the fear of 
death and of coming judgment j by the conscious- 
ness that, death cannot separate us from the love of 
Christ, and that in the day of judgment none shall 
lay anything to the charge of God's elect, since 
Christ who died and rose again maketh intercession 
for them on high. All this is blessed, great, and 
glorious, but yet it is incomplete. We need some- 
thing more. Our hope supplies it. 

There is yet in the future, salvation from the 



20 Reasons 

grave — and so Christ is the Saviour of all men, for 
all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and 
shall come forth, they that have done good to the 
resurrection of life, and they that have done evil 
to the resurrection of damnation — some to ever- 
lasting life, and some to shame and everlasting 
contempt. John v : 27, 28. Daniel xii : 1-4. But 
though all men shall be saved or delivered from 
death, yet this is not eternal salvation. Beyond 
this resurrection there is an especial salvation for 
those that believe and obey the Lord. " Israel shall 
be saved in (by) the Lord with an everlasting sal- 
vation, ye shall not be ashamed or confounded, 
world without end." Is. xlv : 17. " Being made 
perfect he became the author of eternal salvation 
to all them that obey him." Heb. v : 9. This sal- 
vation is perfect, complete, and perpetual. It lifts 
man upward above the realm of mists, and shades, 
and gloom — it bears him homeward to his rest. It 
rends the sepulchre and bids its darkness flee. It 
pours the sunshine of eternity forever in upon his 
ransomed soul. It delivers him from pain and sor- 
row and sighing ; from the ills of life and the 
agonies of death ; from all the evils which men 
have experienced, from all the sorrows that mor- 
tals have known. It lands him beyond the voice 
of scorn, beyond the strife of tongues, beyond the 
horrors of war, and the tumults of worldliness. At 
last he reaches the heavenly shore ; his feet at 
last stand " within thy gates, Jerusalem," and he 
is SAVED. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 21 

I hope to be saved — fully, finally, and eternally. 
I hope to be rescued, delivered, redeemed and 
forever freed from all the ills, pains, dangers, bur- 
dens, and infirmities caused by sin and Satan, and 

I hope to be/ permitted to shine in the joy and 
light and glory of God forevermore. And is not 
this a mighty hope ? "What better hope can there 
be as an " helmet 17 to save a reeling brain, and hide 
a head battered by the blows of countless enemies, 
than the hope of salvation ? — this great, grand 
thought that all will come right at last ! — all things 
are working for good, — the shades will vanish, 
the clouds depart, the tears be wiped away, the 
diseases rebuked, the pains removed, death des- 
troyed, the grave emptied of its treasures, and all 
the realms of light and love, and eternal gladness 
shall be opened to our joyful gaze. Reader, have 
you this hope ? If not I beg you to seek it now, 
for " how shall we escape if we neglect so great 
salvation ?" Heb. ii : 3. 

III. I hope for the resurrection of the dead. 

II Of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am 
called in question." Acts xxiii : 6. " But this I 
confess unto thee, that after the way that they 
call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, 
believing all things which are written in the law 
and in the prophets, and have hope towards God, 
which they themselves also allow, that there shall 
be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and 
the unjust." Acts xxiv : 14, 15. " And now I stand 



22 Reasons 

and am judged for the hope of the promise made of 
God unto our fathers : unto which our twelve tribes, 
instantly serving God, day and night, hope to 
come. For which hope's sake, king Agrippa, I am 
accused of the Jews. Why should it be thought a 
thing incredible with you that God should raise 
the dead ?" Acts xxvi : 6-8. " Blessed be the God 
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which accord- 
ing to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again, 
unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead." 1 Pet : 1, 3. 

The word hope in the Greek has, as I have stated, 
a broad sense including anticipation, or even ap- 
prehension, and when Paul alludes to the resurrec- 
tion of the unjust, he may have in his mind this 
sense of the term as he did once on another occa- 
sion. 2 Cor. viii : 5. But though the resurrection 
of the dead shall bring forth the wicked to just and 
terrible condemnation, it is nevertheless to the true 
Christian an object of ardent and joyous hope. 
We hope for rain and sunshine, although these 
bring forth not only wheat but tares, not only pre- 
cious fruits, but thorns and briars which are nigh 
unto cursing, whose end is to be burned. We 
value learning though it certainly qualifies many a 
villain to do worse injury to his fellows than he 
would without it. Time is precious, though many 
make the blessing a curse to themselves, and so a 
resurrection from the grave is desirable and wor- 
thy of our hopes, even though in that resurrection 



For the Hope that is in Me. 23 

shall at last be comprehended and brought forth 
some, like one of whom it has been written, "good 
were it for that man that he had never been born." 
Mark xiv : 21. I hope to be eaised up if I am called 
to die ; and I hope that those who have been conquer- 
ed by death and swallowed up by the grave, will 
be delivered up at the call of death's great over- 
comer. And this hope, so bright and cheering, is 
no new or unheard of hope. It was the hope of 
the patriarch of Uz, who said : " There is hope of a 
tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, 
and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. 
Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, 
and the stock thereof die in the ground ; yet 
through the scent of water it will bud, and bring 
forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth, and 
wasteth away : yea, man giveth up the ghost, and 
where is he ? As the waters fail from the sea, and 
the flood decayeth and drieth up : so man lieth 
down, and riseth not : till the heavens be no more, 
they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their 
sleep. that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, 
(Sheol) that thou wouldest keep me secret, until 
thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me 
a set time, and remember me ! If a man die, shall 
he live again ? all the days of my appointed time 
will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, 
and I will answer thee ; thou wilt have a desire 
to the work of thy hands." Job xiv : 7-15. 

The same hope of being remembered and called 



24 Reasons 

by his God from his long repose when his change 
should come, is found in another place, where, in 
the midst of all the darkness of his bitter tempta- 
tions, he desires to leave to mankind as an ever- 
lasting heritage, the engraven record of his confi- 
ding trust in God. 

11 Oh, that my words might now be written down ! 
Oh, that they might be engraved on a tablet ! 
With a pen of iron and with lead. 
That they might be carved forever on a rock ! 
That I do know my Living Redeemer ; 
That at the end, he shall stand upon the earth : 
And after I awake shall this be brought to pass, 
That I shall see God of my flesh, 
Inasmuch as I myself shall behold him mine, 
And mine eyes shall see him and not as a stran- 
ger ; 

The desires of my breast will be fulfilled. w 

Job xix : 23-27.* 

This was also the hope of the Patriarch David, 
who u is not ascended into the heavens," but u is 
both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us 
unto this day." Acts ii : 29-34. For he declares, 
11 As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness, 
I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." 
Ps. xvii : 15. " Thou which hast shewed me great 
and sore troubles shalt quicken me again, and shall 
bring me up again from the depths of the earth, 

* Fry's translation of Job. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 25 

Thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me 
on every side. I will also praise thee with the 
psaltery, even thy truth, my God : unto thee 
will I sing with the harp, thou Holy One of Is- 
rael. My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing un- 
to thee ; and my soul which thou hast redeemed." 
Ps. lxxi : 20-23. " God will redeem my soul from 
the power of the grave ; (Sheol) for he shall receive 
me." Ps. xlix : 15. 

Isaiah had this same hope when he sang, "He 
shall swallow up death in victory, and the Lord 
God shall wipe away tears from off all faces, and 
the rebuke of his people shall he take away from 
off all the earth, for the Lord hath spoken it." 
" Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead 
body shall they arise ! Awake and sing, ye that 
dwell in dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, 
and the earth shall cast out her dead. Come, my 
people, and enter into thy chambers and shut thy 
doors about thee, and hide thyself for a little mo- 
ment till the indignation be overpast, for behold 
the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the in- 
habitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth 
also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more 
cover her slain." Isa. xxv : 8 ; xxvi : 19-21. 

The same hope inspired the burning eloquence 
of the prophet Ezekiel when he declared, " Thus 
saith the Lord God : Behold, my people, I will 
open your graves, and cause you to come up out of 
your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. 



26 Reasons 

And ye shall know that I am Jehovah, when I 
have opened your graves, my people, and brought 
j r ou up out of your graves, and shall put my Spirit 
in you t and ye shall live, and I shall place you in 
your own laud : Then shall ye know that I Jeho- 
vah have spoken it, and performed it, saith the 
Lord." Ezek. xxxvii : 12, 14. This was the hope 
of the prophets, the hope of the patriarchs, and 
11 the hope of Israel" for which in after times Paul 
could say, "I am bound with this chain." 

This same hope was before the prophet Daniel, 
who was to go his way and " rest," and stand in his 
lot " at the end of the days," when " many that 
sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to 
everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting 
contempt, and they that be wise shall shine as the 
brightness of the firmament, and they that turn 
many to righteousness, as the stars forever and 
ever." Dan. xii : 2, 13. 

This hope was the hope of the apostles of the 
Lamb — of Peter, who was begotten again to a 
lively hope, " by the resurrection of Jesus Christ 
from the dead," — of Paul who labored " if by any 
means" he " might attain unto the resurrection from 
the dead" — of John, who'" saw the dead small and 
great stand before God" — of the Thessalonians, 
who in view of it sorrowed not " even as others 
that had no hope," — and indeed it was the hope of 
all who believed in Him that said, " I am the re- 
surrection and the life," " every one which seeth 



For the Hope that is in Me. 27 

the Son and believeth on him, may have everlast- 
ing life : and I will eaise him up at the last bay." 
John vi : 40. " The hour is coming, in the which 
all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and 
shall come fokth ; they that have done good unto 
the resurrection of life, and they that have done 
evil unto the resurrection of damnation." John v : 
28, 29. 

This hope is my hope. I make no covenant with 
death or agreement with sheol. I have no love for 
death. Nevertheless if I must die I die hopefully. 
If buried " my flesh shall rest in hope" — in hope of 
the resurrection of the dead. 

The night-shadow is not long — the morn will 
break in glory by and by. Our Eedeemer liveth. 
He has burst the grave, vanquished death, and 
made known the path of life to those who follow 
him. He arose visibly, personally and bodily. 
He is the lirst fruits, the pledge, the sample " of 
them that slept." He will come back and send his 
messengers to gather in his whole harvest in due 
time. He hath the keys of hades and of death, and 
shall unlock those dark abodes and reclaim his 
jewels which are hid in dust and darkness there. 
I shall behold him. Mine eyes shall see the King 
in his glory. His voice, sweeter than all melody 
and mightier than all other voices, shall break in 
upon the sleep of ages and charm the dull ear of 
death. His power shall rend the solid marbles and 
stir the slumbering myriads to conscious life and 



28 Reasons 

glorious immortality. The trumpet shall sound 
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and wo 
shall be changed. Quick as the electric flash the 
long dormant life shall be rekindled in an immortal 
flame. This earth, groaning and travailing in pain, 
shall heave its last mighty throe, and from it shall 
break forth an immortal host, countless and glo- 
rious as the very stars of heaven. I shall see 
loved faces then. I shall hear loved voices then ! 
I shall clasp friendly hands then. I shall gaze rap- 
turously then into eyes which tears no more shall 
dim. I shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in 
the kingdom of God. I shall behold martyrs and 
saints, apostles and confessors. Those that led 
me to the Lamb of God, that taught my lips to 
pray, that bathed me in the waters of an holy bap- 
tism shall be there. I shall meet unnumbered 
brethren in the Lord, now unknown — then well 
known — now sorrowful, then always rejoicing. I 
shall meet those that have heard the word of Christ 
at my mouth, and whom in Christ Jesus I have 
begotten in the Gospel. I trust that Christ's 
favor shall place me among the saved ones there, 
and they shall be " my hope and joy and crown of 
rejoicing, in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ 
at his coming." Reader, shall I not meet you there, 
shining like an angel amid the radiant ranks of the 
redeemed? let us be there in the glorious re- 
surrection morning. 
This is my hope. Those dear as life to me shall 



For the Hope that is in Me. 29 

come to meet the Saviour in that day, and we shall 
be " forever with the Lord," and forever safe in his 
presence from all the ills of life or death, of earth 
or hell. Compared with such a prospect, how vain 
are worldly hopes. What are the rewards of earth 
compared with the glories of being " recompensed 
at the resurrection of the just" ? Luke xiv : 14. 
What are the joys of earth compared with the gush- 
ing raptures of that glorious hour ? What are the 
friendships of earth compared with those associa- 
tions "where death and the tomb shall divide hearts 
no more ?" Reader, have you the hope of all these 
joys ? Is your trust in Him who is " the resur- 
rection and the life ?" Then happy are you, for 
you are " rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, 
instant in prayer." Hold fast unto the end, and 
Christ shall give to you eternal life and raise you 
up " at the last day." 

IV. I have hope of glory — the glory of God. 
" Therefore being justified by faith we have peace 
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom 
also we have access by faith unto this grace where- 
in we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of 
God." Rom. v. 1-4. " To whom God would make 
known what is the riches of the glory of this mys- 
tery among the Gentiles ; which is Christ in you 
the hope of glory." Col. i : 27. 

I hope for the glory of God. Not the glory of 
earth, that dims and fades and fleets before my 
gaze, but the glory of God. That which bathed 



30 Reasons 

Mount Sinai with unearthly brightness — that which 
sat like a cloud of light upon the mercy seat ; that 
which shone from heaven upon the wondering 
shepherds to whom angels sang their songs at 
Jesus' birth ; that which came down upon the mount 
of transfiguration, when Moses and Blias appeared 
in glory, and the fishermen of Galilee saw " the 
kingdom of God come with power," and " were 
eye-witnesses of his majesty." That glory which 
Christ, having suffered, entered into — even the 
glory which he had with the Father " before the 
world was" — that glory which " shall be revealed 
and all flesh shall see it together" — that of wbich 
Jesus prayed, " I will that those whom thou hast 
given me, be where I am and behold my glory ;" 
that glory, of which Paul wrote, " For our light 
affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for 
us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory, w T hile we look not at the things that are 
seen, but at the things that are unseen." " For I 
reckon that the sufferings of this present time are 
not worthy to be compared with the glory that 
shall be revealed in us." " "When Christ who is 
our life shall appear, then shall we also appear 
with him in glory." He " shall change our vile body, 
that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious 
body." " So also is the resurrection of the dead, It 
is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory ; it is sown 
in weakness, it is raised in power ; it is sown a 
natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." " There- 



For the Hope that is in Me. 31 

fore I endure all things for the elects 7 sake, that 
they also may obtain salvation that is in Christ Je- 
sus with eternal GLORY." 

Such are some of the many words of God 
upon which I base my hope of glory. Not 
a perishing glory like that of princes and po- 
tentates — not an accursed glory like that of 
conquerors whose laurels are wet with tears and 
red with gore — not like the glories of this world 
which pass at the approach of the grim king of ter- 
rors ; but the eternal glory of our glorious God, 
the splendor of his kingdom, the light of his coun- 
tenance, the blessedness of his presence, and the 
untold and unimagined raptures of his everlasting 
home. 

This is my hope ; and is it not enough to make 
earthly pleasures seem as dross, and earthly sor- 
rows light ? 0, is it not more glorious than all the 
hopes of mortal birth ? Give me this hope, though 
every other hope may fail, and I can triumph amid 
the ruin of earthly prospects, and the wreck of 
earthly joys. Over them all I can glory, for my 
faith and hope are set in God. 

V. I hope to be like Christ the Son of God. 

" Beloved, now are ye the sons of God ; and it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we 
know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like 
him ; for we shall see him as he is. And every 
man that hath this hope (ep'auto) upon Him, purifieth 
himself, even as he is pure." 1 John iii : 2, 3. " For 



32 Reasons 

as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall 
also bear the image of the heavenly." 1 Cor. xv : 
49. He "shall change our vile body, that it may- 
be fashioned like unto his glorious body, ac- 
cording to the working whereby he is able to 
subdue all things unto himself." Phil, ii : 21. " I 
shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." 
Ps. xvii : 15. 

This is my hope. A hope of being forever like 
Christ. I hope to be like him morally ; pure, holy, 
guileless and sincere. I hope to be like him men- 
tally ; freed from ignorance, perversity, perplexi- 
ty, and uncertainty. I hope to be like him physi- 
cally ; and bear and image forth, in this vile body, 
the likeness of his resurrection glory in the world 
to come. But as my soul can only show his love, 
when he hath first shed it abroad in my heart by 
the Holy Spirit ; so my body can never reflect his 
image until transformed by his Almighty power. 
Then shall the weakness and pain of mortality all 
be gone ; the ills and woes of earth forever depart- 
ed ; infirmity, deformity, and weakness shall be for- 
gotten, and the joys and glories of the glorified 
and Triumphant Head shall fill each member of 
that Church " which is his body, the fullness of him 
that filleth all in all." Ah ! is not this a good hope ? 
To be like Christ in whom all excellencies com- 
bine ? For the disciple to be with and like his 
Master — surely this is honor and joy enough for 
one whose only boasting is that of a sinner saved 



For the Hope that is in Me. 33 

by grace. But yet there is more than this reserv- 
ed for the faithful who " hope unto the end." 

VI. I hope for the glorious appearing of Jesus 
Christ " in the clouds of heaven with power and 
great glory." " For the grace of God that bring- 
eth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching 
tis, that denying ungodliness, and worldly lusts, we 
should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this 
present world ; looking for that blessed hope, and 
the glorious appearing of the great God, and our 
Saviour Jesus Christ ; who gave himself for us, 
that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and pu- 
rify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good 
works." Titus ii : 11-14. 

" Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be 
sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to 
be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus 
Christ." 1 Pet. i : 13. 

11 For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of re- 
joicing ? Are not even ye in the presence of our 
Lord Jesus Christ at his coming ?" 1 Thess. ii : 19. 

"But I would not have you to be ignorant, 
brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that 
ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. 
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, 
even so them also which sleep in Jesus, will God 
bring with him. For this we say unto you by the 
word of the Lord, that we which are alive and re- 
main unto the coming op the Lord shall not pre- 
vent them which are asleep. For the Lord him- 



34 Beasons 

self shall descend from heaven with a shout, with 
the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of 
God : and the dead in Christ shall rise first : then 
we which are alive and remain shall be caught up 
together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord 
in the air : and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 
Wherefore, comfort one another with these words." 
IThess.iv: 13-18. 

This is my hope — the hope of beholding Christ 
coming in his regal majesty, crowned with many 
crowns, glorified in his saints and admired in all 
them that believe. And this event is of especial 
importance, because all the other objects of my 
hope are to be received in their fullness and per- 
fection at the consumation of this " blessed hope." 
The hope of Eternal Life is realized " when the 
Son of man shall come in his glory with all the 
holy angels," for then the wicked shall go away 
into everlasting punishment, " but the righteous 
unto life eternal." Matt, xxv : 46. The hope of 
salvation reaches to the time when he who once was 
offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear no more 
sin bearer, but " unto salvation" for them that ex- 
pect him. Heb. ix : 28. The hope of the resurrec- 
tion reaches onward to the last day, when he who 
is the Resurrection and the life shall come to raise 
his people from their graves ; — the hope of glory 
can never have reached its full accomplishment 
until the glorious appearing of Christ when " we 
also shall appear with him in glory ;" and the hope 



For the Hope that is in Me. 35 

of being like Jesus is referred directly to the time 
" when he shall appeak," and " we shall be like him, 
for we shall see him as he is." 

All these hopes centre in that day. All our ex- 
pectations converge to that glorious event. Around 
that radiant morning's dawn, hang all the foresha- 
dowed and predicted splendors which filled the 
minds of prophets and apostles with rapture and 
delight. It will be a glorious day. I hope to be- 
hold its light. I hope to see my Saviour ; no more 
the man of sorrows, or the bleeding Lamb ; but the 
lion of the Tribe of Judah, the prince of the kings 
of the earth, the king of kings, and lord*, of lords. 

I hope to see him in peace, to be so kept by his 
power, and saved by his grace, that I may have 
confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his 
coming. I hope to hear him speak my worthless 
name, and — 0, A can it be ! — to hear him say to me, 

II Well done !" 

And is there not enough in this hope to inspire 
with gladness each believing heart that rejoices in 
the saving grace of Christ? The thought and 
hope that the long absent master shall return to 
claim his own, — shall dry their tears and repair 
their losses ; shall raise their friends from death, 
shall engird them with immortal strength, shall 
save them from all their foes, shall make them like 
himself, shall bid them enter into his joy, behold 
his glory, abide in his tabernacle, sit on his throne, 
gaze upon his countenance, listen to his voice, eel- 



Hti Reasons 

ebrate his praises, and so ever be " with the Lord." 
Ah ! is not this a joyous hope ? And such a hope 
as this is mine. I hope to see Jesus Christ himself 
appear again in the clouds of heaven, in glory and 
in majesty, to save his people and to overthrow his 
enemies. Do you ask of me a reason of this hope ? 
Turn back then and read the scriptures I have 
quoted, and say have I not reasons there ? But I 
have other reasons, a few of which I will present. 

1. I hope for it, because the ancient patriarchs 
expected and predicted that event. " And Enoch 
also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these 
saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands 
of his saints. To execute judgment upon all, and 
convince all that are ungodly among them of all 
their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly com- 
mitted, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly 
sinners have spoken against him." Jude 14, 15. 

Job declared, " I know that my Redeemer liveth, 
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the 
earth." Job xix : 25. And even Balaam, wicked 
as he was, when once the Spirit of God came upon 
him, was forced to say, w r hile beholding the vision 
of the Almighty, and predicting what should hap- 
pen in the latter days, " I shall see him, but not 
now : I shall behold him, but not nigh : there shall 
come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise 
out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, 
and destroy all the children of Sheth . . . Out of 
Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion, and 



For the Hope that is in Me. 37 

shall destroy him that remaineth of the city." 
Numb, xxiv : 17, 19. 

* Balaam has never yet seen the rising of that Star. 
He died the death of the sinful, notwithstanding 
all his pious desires. Yet he shall see that Star 
and behold him but " not nigh." When they " that 
pierced him" shall see him, and they that condemn- 
ed him shall behold him " sitting on the right hand 
of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven," 
then shall this prophecy receive its full accomplish- 
ment. 

2. I hope for the Lord's appearing, because holy 
prophets have foretold it. Said David, the sweet 
Psalmist of Israel, " Our God shall comb and shall 
not keep silence : a fire shall devour before him, 
and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. 
He shall call to the heavens from above, and to 
the earth, that he may judge his people. Gather 
my saints together unto me ; those that have made 
a covenant with me by sacrifice. And the heavens 
shall declare his righteousness ; for God is judge 
himself." Ps. 1: 3-6. 

* Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth ; 
the world also shall be established that it shall not 
be moved : he shall judge the people righteously. 
Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be 
glad ; let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof. 
Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein : then 
shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the 
Lord : for he cometh, for he cometh to judge tho 



38 Reasoiis 

earth ; he shall judge the world with righteous- 
ness, and the people with his truth." Ps. xcvi : 
10-13. 

Isaiah also pours forth in glowing strains the 
same grand truth in words like these : " Strengthen 
ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. 
Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, 
fear not : behold, your God will come with ven- 
geance, even God with a recompense ; he will come 
and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be 
opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstop- 
ped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and 
the tongue of the dumb sing : for in the wilderness 
shall waters break out, and streams in the desert." 
Is. xxxv : 3-6. " Behold the Lord God will come 
with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him : 
behold, his reward is with him, and his work be- 
fore him. 77 Is. xl : 10. " For, behold, the Lord 
will come with fire, and with his chariots like a 
whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his 
rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his 
sword will the Lord plead with all flesh : and the 
slain of the Lord shall be many. 77 Is. lxvi : 15, 16. 
11 And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our 
God ; we have waited for him, and he will save us : 
this {.9 the Lord ; we have waited for him, we will 
be glad and rejoice in his salvation. 77 Is. xxv : 9. 

Such were the words in which Isaiah proclaimed 
the approaching advent of the mighty one. Eze- 
kiel also brought from the mouth of God this mes- 



For the Hope that is in Me. 39 

sage concerning the crown and diadem of Judah : 
" And thou, profane, wicked prince of Israel, whose 
day is come, when iniquity shall have an end, thus 
saith the Lord God : Remove the diadem, and take 
off the crown : this shall not le the same : exalt 
him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will 
overturn, overturn, overturn it : and it shall be no 
more, until he come whose eight it is ; and I will 
give it him." Ezek. xxi : 25-27. And Daniel while 
foretelling the course of earthly empire from the 
times in which he lived to its final subversion, 
when the judgment should sit and the books be 
opened, said, " I saw, in the night, visions ; and, be- 
hold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds 
of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and 
they brought him near before him. And there 
was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, 
that all people, nations, and languages, should serve 
him : his dominion is an everlasting dominion, 
which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that 
which shall not be destroyed." Dan. vii : 13-14. 

Thus did the ancient prophets of Israel, in nu- 
merous places, predict the coming glory of the 
everlasting kingdom of the great God, and the tri- 
umphant appearing of his only begotten son. 

3. I hope for the appearing of the Saviour be- 
cause he himself has promised it. Many are his 
words which declare the fact ; thus he said : " the 
Son of man shall come in the glory of his father 
with his angels ; and then he shall reward every 



40 Reasons 

man according to his works." Matt, xvi : 27 ; and 
there were some standing there, who saw upon the 
mount of transfiguration a representation of his 
coming in his kingdom. Again, when he would 
comfort his sorrowing disciples, he gave to them 
this parting promise : " Let not your heart be 
troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in me. 
In my Father's house are many mansions : if it 
were not so, I would have told you. I go to pre- 
pare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a 
place for you, I will come again, and receive you 
unto myself: that, where I am, there ye may be 
also. 7 ' John xiv : 1-3. 

4. I hope that my Saviour will come again, be- 
cause that when he departed, celestial visitants 
gave to his wondering followers assurance of his 
return. Jesus had led his disciples out to the 
brow of Olivet, and there gave to them his parting 
charge and his parting blessing. " And when he 
had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was 
taken up ; and a cloud received him out of their 
sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward 
heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by 
them in white apparel ; which also said, Ye men 
of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? 
This same Jesus which is taken up from you into 
heaven, shall so come m like kanneb as ye have 
seen him go into heayex." Acts i : 9-11. No lan- 
guage could more clearly disclose the event for 
which I hope. " This same Jesus" fixes the per- 



For the Hope that is in Me. 41 

sonality, and " in like manner as ye have seen him 
go," the mode of his return. No sophistry can 
pervert the language, and no spiritual appearing 
can fulfil it. Upon this word I dare to rest my 
hope. 

5. I hope for it because the apostles continually 
expected, predicted, and alluded to it. Some 
twelve times in the two 'brief epistles to the Thes- 
salonians does Paul allude to this glorious event, 
and with such vivid and forceful rhetoric that 
some sceptics, universalists, and others have infer- 
red that Paul himself expected to live to see that 
day, and consequently that he was mistaken and un- 
inspired, forgetting that he himself said that that 
day should not come until the apostacy had first ap- 
peared, that the day was not " at hand" or impend- 
ing, (enesteJcen) and that in the same passage where 
he speaks of the judging of " the quick and dead at 
his appearing and kingdom," he says, " I am now 
ready to be offered and the time of my departure 
is at hand." Like Peter, who with a full understand- 
ing that he must by death " glorify God," neverthe- 
less spake of the time when Christ's glory should 
be revealed as the object of his hope, and joy, and 
trust. 2 Thess. ii : 12 ; 2 Tim. iv : 8 ; John xxi : 
18, 19. 1 Pet. iv : 4. 2 Pet. i : 15. 

The whole apostolic church were filled with this 
" blessed hope." Paul tells us of their faith and 
how they " turned to God from idols to serve the 
living and true God : and to wait for his son from 



42 Reasons 

heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, 
which delivered us from the wrath to come." 1 
Thess. i : 9, 10. Peter also gives charge to his 
brethren concerning their duty, and this is the 
grand motive which he uses to impress them to 
perform their responsibilities, " The elders which 
are among you, I exhort, who am also an elder, and 
a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a 
partaker, of the glory that shall be revealed : Feed 
the flock of God which is among you, taking the 
oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly ; 
not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind ; neither 
as being lords over God's heritage, but being en- 
samples to the flock. And when the chief Shep- 
herd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of 
glory that fadeth not away." 1 Pet. v : 1-4. James 
also uses the same motive for the comfort of his 
afflicted brethren, saying, " Be patient therefore, 
brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, 
the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of 
the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he 
receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also pa- 
tient ; stablish your hearts : for the coming of the 
Lord draweth nigh." James v : 7, 8. Jude echoes 
the ancient warning, " behold the Lord cometh 
with ten thousands of his saints." John exclaims : 
11 Behold, he cometh with clouds ; and every eye 
shall see him, and they also which pierced him : 
and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of 
him. Even so, Amen." Rev. i : 7 ; and finally, the 



For the Hope that is in Me. 43 

last recorded promise of Christ to his church, the 
last parting postscript in his last letter to his suf- 
fering bride, the last link in the great prophetic 
chain that binds the church to her anchor " within 
the vail/' the glorious sentence that concludes, and 
perfects, and seals up the revelation of God to man 
is, " Surely I come quickly !" And from my heart, 
like that of John and of the universal church, wells 
up the responsive prayer, " Amen! even so, come 
Lord Jesus." Rev. xxii : 20. 

Such are the teachings of Patriarchs, Apostles, 
Prophets, Celestial Witnesses, and our Lord him- 
self concerning this great object of Christian hope. 
These are some of the weighty reasons that I have 
for cherishing this blessed, this glorious hope. 
Upon these it is firmly grounded. It is neither 
vague, nor vain. It is a good hope through grace, 
and with it God has given us " everlasting consola- 
tion. 77 It is a lively hope — a hope like an anchor 
to the soul, both sure and steadfast, reaching to that 
within the vail, whither Jesus, the forerunner, is, 
for us, entered. 77 Heb. vi : 19. 

Reader, is this your hope ? Are you so securely 
trusting in Christ that you can have confidence in 
him and rejoice in the prospects of meeting him ? 
Can you be joyful in this hope ? If not, I pray 
you, flee to Christ, and, by believing, receive 
"everlasting consolation, good hope through grace, 77 
and joy, and peace eternal in him. 



44 Reasons 

The Christian's hope, as revealed in the Holy 
Scriptures, resting upon the promises of God, em- 
bracing eternal life, glory, salvation, immortality, a 
resurrection, and all other blessings which accompany 
the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, is a subject 
of paramount interest and importance to those who 
have learned to trust in - Jesus Christ, and wait 
with patience for His salvation. It supplants the 
vain and evanescent hopes of earth ; it recalls the 
mind from the vacillation and aimlessness of its 
worldly bewilderment ; and it settles and steadies the 
soul by attaching to it something " both sure and 
steadfast/' It takes up the heart with a mighty 
attraction, and sweeps it into the beginning of a 
great and endless orbit, where it shall ever be drawn 
forward as by an unbroken bond, and thus run on 
in a race of undiminished glory throughout the 
cycles of eternity. 

And as Jesus Christ is " our hope," we most na- 
turally long for the day when he shall appear, and 
when we, no longer perturbed by the attractions of 
earthly things, shall enter fully upon our eternal 
race, — when " the hope laid up for us in heaven/' 
shall be fully realized, and we shall participate the 
fulness of our eternal joy. Hope deferred maketh 
the heart sick, though when the hope is surc^ we 
can afford to wait for its full realization. When 
our souls are filled with the deep consciousness that 
God's word will be accomplished, — that our Lord 



For the Hope that is in Me. 



45 



will come and give us life, and glory, and joy, and 
immortality, and eternal blessedness ; what matters 
it though years may roll away, and changes may 
come, and shadows, and storms, and tempests, may 
intervene ; if there shall yet be peace, and light, 
and joy and blessing eternal at last ? And our 
certainty of reaching this final goal of triumph, en- 
ables us to exercise " the work of faith/' " the labor 
of love," and the "patience of hope" amid all our 
trials here. And the hope of the Christian has such 
immutable grounds, and such glorious objects, that 
it, of all others, should inspire patience and unfail- 
ing confidence. 

But glorious as our hope is, and always has been 
of itself, one fact seems to shed increasing lustre on 
it as time wears away. " Our salvation is nearer 
than when we believed." We are four thousand 
years less distant from those glories, than were the 
patriarchs when they looked for and predicted them. 
We are two or three thousand years nearer to them 
than were the prophets, when they foresaw and fore- 
told these blessings. We are more than eighteen hun- 
dred years nearer to them than were they who heard 
the Saviour say, " I will come again ;" or than they 
who " turned from idols to serve the living God, and 
to wait for His son from heaven. Even Jesus, that 
delivered us from the wrath to come." 1 Thess. i : 10. 

How near we are to that day, I dare not presume 
to tell. I do not know. I have no evidence that 



46 Reasons 

others do. Many persons have made sad mistakes 
when they have dared to think and speak too posi- 
tively, concerning "the times and the seasons, which 
the Father hath put in his own power." Acts i : 7. 
Our Lord would have his whole church awaiting 
with watchfulness his return ; hence he says : " Watch, 
for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of 
man cometh ;" and, as if he would not limit this 
admonition to any single age, he said: "What I 
say unto you, I say unto all ; watch !" We are 
therefore to maintain a position of constant watchful- 
ness, so that that day shall not come upon us unawares, 
or as a thief ? Matt, xxiv : 44 ; Mark xiii : 37. 

And as the weary night-watcher catches with joy 
the first gray tint that tells of coming morn, so those 
who do wait for" 5 the Lord " more than they that 
watch for the morning," need make no excuses for 
all their earnest and watchful gazing to see if there 
are tokens of the approach of Him whom their souls 
love. And it cannot be wrong or presumptuous to 
observe the grand and prominent outlines and inci- 
dents, which stand like landmarks and milestones to 
tell us of our progress in our mortal course, and of 
oar proximity to our final goal. Nay, if the Jews 
were condemned as hypocrites because they could 
" discern the face of the sky," but could not " dis- 
cern the signs of the times/' and if terrible calami- 
ties came upon them because they knew not " the 
time of their visitation," surely it may well be re- 






For the Hope that is in Me. 47 

garded as presumption in us, if having been fore- 
warned, we refuse to listen to 'that apostolic word, 
which says : 

" We have also a more sure word of prophecy ; 
whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto 
a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day 
dawn, and the day star arise. In your hearts know- 
ing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of 
any private interpretation. For the prophecy came 
not in old time by the will of man ; but holy men of 
God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost/' 
2 Peter i : 19-21. 

Let us then carefully read some of those " sure 
words," and observe their teachings. 

I hope to behold my Saviour, in the visible glory 
of His coming, not long hence ; and with meekness 
and fear, I would give some of the numerous reasons 
for that hope. God help me to choose them wisely, 
and you to ponder them carefully ! 

I. The great king of Babylon once dreamed of the 
chief kingdoms of the earth, under the figure of a 
gigantic image of resplendent brightness, having in 
its composition five different elements or materials. 
The head was gold, the breast and arms silver, the 
belly and sides of brass, the legs of iron, and the 
feet of iron and clay, or pottery. He saw after- 
wards a stone, torn from the mountain's brow by an 
unseen force, rushing down upon the image, strik- 
ing it upon its feet, breaking and grinding the 



48 Reasons 

whole to powder, so that the mountain wind bore 
it away like chaff from off the threshing floor, and 
then this same stone " became a great mountain, 
and filled the whole earth." 

Now it is clear from the language of the chapter, 
that this image of a man, represented man's govern- 
ment in the world, and the succession of great em- 
pires which should arise. What the Stone signified 
is equally plain. The explanation as given by the 
Prophet Daniel to the king of Babylon is as fol- 
lows : 1. " Thou art this head of gold." 2. " After 
thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee," 
i. e., silver. 3. " And another third kingdom of 
brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth." 
4. " And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as 
iron." 5. u And as the toes of the feet were part of 
iron and part of clay — the kingdom shall be divi- 
ded — it shall be partly strong and partly broken." 
6. " And in those days shall the God of heaven set 
up a Kingdom, which shall never be destroyed . . . 
but it shall break in pieces and consume all these 
kingdoms, and it shall stand forever," This everlast- 
ing kingdom is represented by the Stone, which " be- 
came a great mountain and filled the whole earth." 

Nothing can be more plain than the fact that the 
first of these kingdoms then existed in the times of 
Daniel himself, — another thing is equally plain, 
namely, as all earthly kingdoms are not yet " broken 
in pieces and consumed/ 9 we have not yet reached 



For the Hope that is in Me. 49 

the end of the vision, the establishment of the ever- 
lasting kingdom of the God of Heaven. Hence we 
are somewhere on this chain of events, past the be- 
ginning, but not yet arrived at the end. Where are 
we in this grand course of human empire ? 

The first kingdom was Babylon ; this is evident 
from the very language used, " Thou art this head 
of gold." The second, or silver kingdom, is that of 
the Medians and Persians by whom the kingdom 
of Babylon was overthrown. Dan. v. 30, 31. The 
third kingdom of brass, represents "the brazen- 
coated Greeks," as Homer calls them, who, under 
the leadership of Alexander the Great, overcame 
the empire of the Medians and Persians, and estab- 
lished the Macedonian empire upon its ruins. The 
fourth kingdom is the mighty empire of the Ro- 
mans, which ruled the world when Christ was born, 
and like massive iron, broke in pieces whatever op- 
posed it. The iron and clay or pottery represent 
the division of that kingdom, which subsequently 
occurred some four or five hundred years after Christ, 
resulting in the establishment of a number of Euro- 
pean kingdoms, which remain, u partly strong and 
partly broken " to this day. Beyond this is the 
coming of the mighty Stone, which shall break in 
pieces and consume all others, and shall become an 
universal kingdom, the kingdom of u the God of 
heaven," and shall stand forever. 

Now the grand question recurs, where are we in 



50 Reasons 

this line of events ? We are not under the rule of 
Babylon, the golden head ; for that passed away some 
five hundred and thirty years before Christ. That 
certainly is past. We are not under the rule of the 
silver kingdom, the Medians and Persians, for their 
superiority, beginning at the conquest of Babylon, 
was overthrown by Alexander some three hundred 
and thirty years before Christ, or more than two 
thousand years ago. Then the Grecian empire was 
first divided, and subsequently its several divisions 
were overthrown, till Egypt, the last remaining one, 
bowed to the sceptre of Borne about thirty years be- 
fore Christ. The period of Rome's iron-like gran- 
deur and majesty has long since passed away, and 
the pen and genius of a sceptic have been enlisted 
to describe its " Decline and Fall." But when 
Borne fell, no other power came up to assume her 
fallen crown, or sway her prostrate sceptre of uni- 
versal empire. No conqueror since then has been 
able to found an empire that could rule the world. 
The fragments of old Rome remain, " partly strong," 
like France and Britain, " partly broken," like Por- 
tugal, and Spain, and Hungary. And here, during 
eome thirteen hundred years, have these fragment- 
ary portions of Imperial Rome, these " toes of iron 
and of clay," in the great image, been upon the 
theatre of prophecy and of history. What comes 
next ? The kingdom of God, the mighty Stone — 
that " which the builders rejected," but which now 



For the Hope that is in Me. 51 

is " the head of the corner/' that of which it is said : 
" Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be 
broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will 
grind him to powder/' Luke xx : 18. This is 
most clearly the next grand event in this prophetic 
course. And this kingdom is to be established by 
" our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living 
and the dead at His appearing and His Kingdom/' 
2 Tim. iv : 1-4. Now in view of all these facts, 
like the mariner who sees the last lights and land- 
marks which mark the conclusion of his voyage, lay- 
ing just before him, I conclude that we must be very 
near the end of this great series of events, and con- 
sequently that the coming of my Lord, and the con- 
summation of my hope " draweth nigh." And besides, 
I remember that all the prophecies concerning these 
four kingdoms are matters in which all Bible stu- 
dents, expositors and Christian historians agree. 
The infidel can neither denv the facts, nor subvert the 
prophecy. Both stand invulnerable. There are 
some, it is true, who suppose that God's King- 
dom was established when Christ came, but this 
seems to be plainly wrong, because, 1. The kingdoms 
of the earth now exist, and are not yet ground to 
powder and scattered like the chaff. 2. Christ had 
no Kingdom while here, but said : " my Kingdom 
is not of this world/' John xviii : 36. 3. The 
stone is to strike the image upon the feet and toes 
of iron and clay, but these "feet and toes/' rep- 



52 Reasons 

resenting divided Rome, were not in existence till 
hundreds of years after Christ was born, under the 
rule of undivided Rome, persecuted in infancy by a 
Roman governor, tributary to Roman exactors, ar- 
rested by Eoman soldiers, led before a Roman tri- 
bunal, scourged by Roman hands, clad in Roman 
purple, condemned by a Roman ruler, crucified up- 
on a Roman cross, pierced with a Roman spear, his 
sepulchre sealed with a Roman seal, guarded by 
Roman warriors, and his resurrection lied about 
afterwards by Roman guards, in obedience to priest- 
ly bribery and pharisaic falsehood. Now since this 
was the aspect of affairs, when Jesus was here on 
earth, I think it is quite clear that he did not then 
establish His everlasting kingdom ; and hence I 
look for Him to come again, and fulfill His glorious 
destiny, and reign upon the earth forever more. I 
look and hope for it soon, and this ancient prophecy, 
now almost fulfilled, is a reason for my hope. Read 
the second chapter of Daniel, and compare it with 
any good history of those times — such as that of 
Rollin, or those of the ancient ivriters themselves, 
and see if these things are not so. 

II. The great prophet Daniel beheld in vision 
these same four great kingdoms, represented by four 
furious and ferocious beasts, rising from the stormy 
bosom of a tempestuous sea. They were an eagle- 
winged lion, a bear, a four-headed leopard, and a 
nondescript and terrible ten-horned beast. He 



For the Hope that is in Me. 53 

afterwards saw amid these ten horns another differ- 
ent one arise, which subverted three that were be- 
fore it, blasphemed the Most High, and persecuted 
his saints, until at length he beheld the thrones of 
judgment placed in solemn state, ci and the Ancient oj 
days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and 
the hair of his head like the pure wool : his throne 
was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning 
fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from 
before him : thousand thousands ministered unto 
him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood be- 
fore him : the judgment was set, and the books 
were opened. I beheld then because of the voice of 
the great words which the horn spake : I beheld 
even till the beast was slain, and his body des- 
troyed, and given to the burning flame. As con- 
cerning the rest of the beasts, they had their domin- 
ion taken away ; yet their lives were prolonged for 
a season and time. I saw in the night visions, and, 
behold, one like the Son of man came with the 
clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of 
days, and they brought him near before him. And 
there was given him dominion, and glory, and a 
kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, 
should serve him : his dominion is an everlasting 
dominion, which shall not pass away, and his king- 
dom that which shall not be destroyed/' Dan. 
vii : 9-14. 

The same events foreshown in the great imago 



54 Reasons 

are here again more fully and definitely represented. 
The beasts represent kingdoms ; mighty, beastly, and 
cruel. This is the interpretation given by the an- 
gel : " The fourth beast shall be the fourth king- 
dom upon the earth/' 

An infidel might have mocked at such an unna- 
tural emblem as a winged lion, but during the re- 
cent excavations at Nineveh, which was the capital 
of the old Assyrian empire, from which Babylon 
afterwards sprung, there was discovered, chisseled 
from the solid rock, " a lion having eagles' wings." 
I have seen an engraving of it. That sculptured 
form was as appropriate a symbol of Babylon as the 
" British lion" is of Britain, or as the " eagle" is of 
America. The lion and the eagle, the kings of 
beasts and of birds are here combined to represent 
the chief of kingdoms. The prophets used this very 
emblem to represent Babylon. " Israel is a scatter- 
ed sheep ; the lions have driven him away : first 
the king of Assyria hath devoured him ; and last 
this Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath 
broken his bones." Jer. i : 17. Ezek. xviii : 1-16. 

At length the prophet beheld another beast, "a 
second like a bear," representing the cruel, raven- 
ous and rapacious Medo-Persian empire. Then 
came the swift and Leopard-like Greeks, and as this 
leoj&rd had " four heads," so after the death of 
Alexander the kingdom was divided into four king- 
doms under the rule of his four great generals : Cas- 



For the Hope that is in Me. 55 

sander reigning over Macedon and Greece, Lysima- 
ctms over Thrace and Bythynia, Ptolemy over Egypt, 
and Selucus over Syria. Following these came the 
mighty empire of the Romans which " devoured and 
brake in pieces" like the iron in the image, " and 
stamped the residue with its feet." Some three or 
four hundred years after Christ this kingdom was 
divided, and within its territory there came up ten 
other kingdoms, answering to the " ten horns." 
Machiavel, the Eoman Catholic historian, little 
thinking what he was doing, has given us the names 
of the ten kingdoms that arose out of the Eoman em- 
pire. 1. The Ostrogoths in Mcesia, 377. 2. The Vis- 
goths in Pannonia, 378. 3. The Sueves and Alans 
in Gascoigne and Spain, 407. 4. Vandals in Africa, 
407. 5. The Franks in France, 407. 6. The Bur- 
gundians in Burgundy, 407. 7. The Heruli and 
Turingi in Italy, 476. 8. The Saxons and Angles 
in Britain, 476. 9. The Huns in Hungary, 356. 
10. The Lombards, first upon the Danube and after- 
wards in Italy, 483. The dates are those given by 
" That excellent chronologer, Bp. Lloyd." Vide 
Newton on the Prophecies, Dissertation xiv, pp. 
209, 210. 

Another power arose, the Papal government, tear- 
ing up three others to make way for itself, and then 
fulfilling its predicted course of blasphemy, hypo- 
crisy, impiety, persecution and blood, down very 
pearly to the present time. In the grand outlines 



56 Beasons 

of this prophetic view there seems to be no room for 
mistake. The prophecy and the history correspond 
as the mirrored likeness corresponds to the human 
face, — they are accurately true. Their accomplish- 
ment of this prophecy fills up the history till the 
present age. 

Again, the question recurs, " Where are we ?" 
Not under Babylonish rule — that is gone — not under 
Persian tyranny, that has passed away — not under 
Grecian government, for Grecia is no longer an em- 
pire — not under mighty and imperial Borne, for that 
is divided and broken into fragments. The ten 
"kingdoms have arisen — the other little one has also 
come up and done its appointed work ; and what 
comes next ? The throne of judgment ! The de- 
struction of the beast by burning flame ! The ap- 
pearing of Christ in glory and majesty ! and the 
everlasting kingdom of God established on the earth! 
Three of these four great empires have passed away, 
the fourth is in its last, its divided stage, and the 
voices of providence and of prophecy alike unite to 
proclaim " Repent, for the kingdom of God is at 
hand I" All things verge onward to this glorious 
day when, says the prophet, " The kingdom and 
dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under 
the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of 
the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an 
everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall 
serve and obey him." Dan. vii : 27. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 57 

This prophetic outline then is another reason for 
my hope that my Lord will appear ere long. Since 
so much of the prophecy has been accomplished, I 
have hope that the accomplishment of the remain- 
der is not far distant ; that soon the judgment shall 
sit, the books be opened, the Son of man appear, 
and the saints of the most High shall receive their 
everlasting kingdom and their great reward. 

III. The angel of the Lord, having led the pro- 
phet Daniel through a brief but graphic narration 
of the events of note in the history of the ages past, 
beginning with those just then transpiring beneath 
his gaze, and going down to the latter days, inform- 
ed him that at "the time of the end" a certain 
mighty power or potentate should run through a 
course of conquest and victory, until at the conclu- 
sion " He shall go forth with great fury to destroy, 
and utterly to make away many. And he shall 
plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas 
in the glorious holy mountain ; yet he shall come 
to his end, and none shall help him. And at that 
time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which 
standeth for the children of thy people : and there 
shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since 
there was a nation even to that same time : and at 
that time thy people shall be delivered, every one 
that shall be found written in the book. And many 
of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall 
awake, some to everlasting life, and some to 



58 Reasons 

shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be 
wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; 
and they that turn many to righteousness as the 
stars for ever and ever/' Dan. xi : 44, 45 ; 
xii: 1-3. 

Now it is quite evident that the end of this series 
of events is in connection with the coming of the 
Lord Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead. 
To apply it to mere temporal deliverances is to make 
the prophets speak great swelling words, which have 
but little force or meaning. It also seems quite 
plain that this " glorious holy mountain" is Mount 
Zion, or Jerusalem, which is " between the seas/' — 
the dead sea being on the east and the Mediterranean 
on the west of it. Now I do not see that this pre- 
diction has ever yet received its accomplishment, 
but from the attention with which the great Euro- 
pean powers are viewing what is termed the " East- 
ern question," from the rising importance of the 
Jewish people, and the peculiar interest that is 
awakened in that nation ; its representatives hold- 
ing the purse-strings of the world ; it seems to me 
exceedingly probable that before long we shall see a 
Euler taking possession of that land and planting 
there the " tabernacles of his palace," and then sud- 
den and unexpectedly shall the terrors of Arma- 
geddon roll in upon the view. I cannot predict 
with positiveness, I am no prophet, but it seems to 
me exceedingly probable that these events may very 



For the Hope that is in Me. 59 

soon be realized. And if so, then I have another 
reason for my hope. 

IV. The same angel, after describing the resurrec- 
tion of those that sleep in the dust of the earth, and 
the glorification of the people of God, who shall 
"shine as the stars forever and ever," continued 
thus : " But thou, Daniel, shut up the words, and 
seal the book, even to the time of the end : many 

shall RUN TO AND FRO, and KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE 

increased/' Dan. xii : 4. Now it- cannot be de- 
nied that there has been, during the last half cen- 
tury, an increase of knowledge entirely unparalleled 
in all the history of the world. 

If we regard this increase of knowledge as having 
respect to this very prophecy, and to the understand- 
ing of the word of God : If like Mich^lis, we say, 
"Many shall give their sedulous attention to the 
understanding of these things" — or with A. Clarke, 
" Many shall endeavor to search out the sense, and 
knowledge shall be increased by these means," or 
with Dr. Coke, " Many shall run to and fro . . earn- 
estly searching into this sealed book, and knowledge 
shall be increased ; light shall be cast on the pro- 
phecies . . . they will be clear as if written with a 
sunbeam :" if with Dr. Gill we say, " Many shall 
be stirred up to inquire into these things . . . the 
knowledge of this book of prophecy will be increased, 
things will appear plainer, the nearer the accom- 
plishment of them," — if this be the sense and scope 



60 Reasons 

of the passage, surely such knowledge has greatly 
increased. Said Sir Isaac Newton, " it is a part of 
this prophecy that it should not be understood be- 
fore the last age of the world ; and therefore it 
makes for the credit of the prophecy that it is not 
yet understood ; but if the last age, the age of open- 
ing these things, be now approaching, (as by the 
great success of late interpreters it seems to be,) we 
have more encouragement than ever to look into 
these things. But in the very end the prophecy 
shall be so far interpreted as to convince many/ 'for 
then/ says Daniel, c many shall run to and fro, and 
knowledge shall be increased/ . . .Among the inter- 
preters of the last age, there is scarce one of note 
who hath not made some discovery worth knowing ; 
whence I seem to gather that God is about opening 
these mysteries."* 

A generation later than this, in 1775, the sainted 
Fletcher of Madely, writing on this subject, said : 
" It is remarkable that more books have bee n writ- 
ten upon the prophecies these last hundred years, than 
were ever known before, and all — those, at least, 
which I have read — agree that these things will, in 
all probability, soon come upon the earth. I know 
many have been grossly mistaken as to the years ; 
but because they were rash, shall we be stupid ? 
Because they said ' to-day,' shall we say never ? and 
cry ' peace, peace/ when we should look about us 

* Observations on the Prophecies. Voice of the Church, p. 235. 



For the Rope that is in Me. 61 

with- eyes full of expectation ? Let us not jud^e 
rashly, nor utter vain predictions in the name of the 
Lord ; but let us look about us with watchful eyes, 
lest the enemy take advantage of us ... If we are 
mistaken in forming conjectures . . if these things 
happen not to us, but to our children, (as they most 
certainly will, before the third generation is swept 
away,) is it not our business to prepare ourselves 
for them t" &c * 

If more books had been written on the prophecies 
during that century than were ever known before, 
is it not true that more, far more, have been writ- 
ten in the last half century than all that were writ- 
ten previously ? The volumes which were issued in 
Fletcher's time, cannot be compared with the mul- 
titudes of more recent issue. It would require a 
volume to catalogue the works on prophecy that 
have leaped from the press during the last genera- 
tion, from such writers as dimming, Croly, Keith, 
Begg, Brooks, Birks, Bickersteth, McNeil, Elliott, 
Maitland, Wolff, and others in England ; the Bo- 
nars, McOheyne, Candlish, Chalmers, Gilfillan, 
and Cunningharae in Scotland ; Gaussen, Heng- 
stenburg, Olshausen, and others upon the continent, 
and in America, from Drs. Duffield, Bamsey, Lord, 
Tyng, Hopkins, — also Messrs. Winthrop, D. N. Lord, 
D. T. Taylor, and others far too numerous to 

Letter on the Prophecies. Works, Vol. 10. ■' Voice of the Church," p. 
266. The " third generation " is passing away. 



62 Reasons 

mention.* Besides these there are hundreds and 
thousands who have studied and are preaching up- 
on the prophecies, who have never written on the 
subject. And many of them are men second to 
none of their compeers in the pulpit, or on the 
platform. Men of eloquence like Chalmers, and 
Melville, and Cumming, and Spurgeon, and Tyng, 
and Burnham ; men of learning like Elliott, and Lord, 
and Wolffe ; men of the deepest piety like McCheyne, 
and Hewettson, and J. K. Lord ; men of the highest 
and the lowest grade, from bishops and princes, 
down to farmers and artisans, — men in all countries 
where the Bible is studied — men whose tongues and 
pens are both " like a pen of a ready writer/' have in- 
dependently, and often unknown to each other, united 
in lavishing their learning and their eloquence up- 
on the exposition of those unfolding oracles, that are 
adapted to human necessities in these last times of 
peril and of sin. 

But perhaps by some, this prediction may be re- 
garded as having a more extended application, and 
so embracing all scriptual knowledge. And if it be 
in this respect that knowledge was to be increased, 
how accurately and gloriously has the prediction 
been accomplished. 

If we go back to the days of Christ, we find the 
Old Testament existing only in the original Hebrew 

*See The Voice of the Church on the Reign of Christ, for an extended list 
of names of writers and preachers on these subjects, occupying several pages. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 63 

and in the Greek translation called the Septuagint, 
made by order of Ptolemy Philadelphia, B.C. about 
288. About one hundred years from the birth of 
Christ, the New Testament writings were completed, 
the last being added by the Apostle John. The 
Christian church of the first age had only the Bible 
in Hebrew and in Greek. The gift of tongues aid- 
ed in its dissemination among different nations, but 
the necessity of versions was speedily felt. The 
work was begun perhaps under the eye, and in the 
days of the Apostles, by the translation of the New 
Testament into the (Peshito) Syriac language. In 
the first ten centuries of the Christian era the Bible 
was translated into as many different tongues : — 
Chaldee, Greek, Syriac, Latin, Egyptian, Ethiopic, 
Armenian, Gothic, Sclavonic, Arabic, and, perhaps, 
Anglo-Saxon ; and some thousands of copies pro- 
bably were transcribed by hand. This with a French 
version, made in the twelfth century, an English one 
in the fourteenth, and in the fifteenth an Italian ver- 
sion, and one in Spanish ; was all that was done for 
the Bible during about fifteen hundred years from 
the time of Christ. Ten versions in ten hundred 
years, and then four versions during five hundred 
years of darkness succeeding. Books were then 
written with the pen, and in England in 1429, 
Nicholas Belward was arraigned for purchasing a 
New Testament for four marks and four pence, and 
teaching William Wright and Margery his wife, the 



64 Reasons 

study of the same. This price would be equal to 
about £45. 6s. 8d, or about two hundred and twenty- 
five dollars for a New Testament. How precious 
must the word of God have been then.* 

At length the art of printing was discovered. The 
first book ever printed was the Book of Books, the 
Book of God, by Faust and Guttenberg, at Metz, 
between the years 1450 and 1455. It was the first 
fruits of a glorious harvest. Other impressions fol- 
lowed, — probably as many as one hundred and fifty 
small editions before the time of Luther. In 1472 
the printers, in a petition, complaining of their pov- 
erty to Sixtus IV., stated that an edition of a theo- 
logical work (including the Bible) consisted of five 
hundred and fifty copies. There must have been then, 
at a moderate calculation, some sixty thousand copies 
of the scriptures circulated, partly in Latin and 
partly in modern languages, before the reformation. 

These volumes, scattered through the lands, had 
in them the germs of a new life for man. They 
quickened the dormant souls of those who sat in 
darkness. Luther arose. In the Castle of Wart- 
burg he translated his German Testament. "Let 
this one book/' said he, " be on all tongues, in all 
harids, under all eyes, in all pens, and in all hearts." 
u Hearken, man ! my brother ! — God, the creator 
of heaven and earth, speaks here to thee/' He fin- 
ished the New Testament and was set at liberty. 

•Our English Bible, p. 45. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 65 

Melancthon assisted to revise it. Three presses were 
employed to print it ; and ten thousand sheets were 
struck off in a day. At last, on the 21st of Sept., 
1522, three thousand Testaments were ready and were 
given to the world. Other editions succeeded this, one 
in the December following, and sixty-eight within 
ten years. When the New Testament was printed 
they commenced to translate the old, and in 1530 
the whole Bible issued from the press. 

Other versions followed. In 1666 the French 
Jesuits threw De Sacy into prison. For two years 
and a half, within the gloomy walls of the old Bas- 
tile, he labored in translating the Bible. It was 
finished one night, and the next day he was set free. 
God maketh the wrath of man to praise him. This 
version is regarded by very many " as the most per- 
fect version in the French or in any other tongue."* 
Like Bunyan's Pilgrim, it was prison work. From 
1550 to 1600 Le Long reckons no fewer than 157 
editions of Bibles or Testaments printed in French. 

Wicliffe's first version of the Bible in English, in 
1380, though not printed, was yet circulated in 
manuscript. The earliest Scripture printed in Eng- 
lish was the seven Penitential Psalms, by Bishop 
Fisher, 1505. About this time arose William Tyn- 
dale, a man of learning, piety, and high and holy 
purpose. When once a priest said to him, " We 
are better without God's laws than the pope's," he 

*Bible in Many Tongues, p. 118. 



66 Reasons 

replied, "I defy the pope and all his laws. . . .If 
God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause the 
boy who driveth the plow to know more of the 
Scriptures than you da"* Disturbed by priests in 
Gloucestershire, he sought another place where he 
might perform his work. He thought of the Bishop 
of London, praised exceedingly by Erasmus, "whose 
tongue maketh of little gnats great elephants," but 
there was no place for Tyndale in that quarter, and 
he says he " undei stood at last, not only that there 
was no room in my Lord of London's palace, to trans- 
late the New Testament, but also that there was no 
place to do it in all England. Boom enough there 
was in my Lord's house for belly-cheer, but none to 
translate the New Testament." Preserved for a 
while from actual want by the kindness of Hum- 
phrey Monmouth, he at length sailed to Hamburgh 
in 1524. The following year he was at Cologne, 
passing through the press the first New Testaments 
ever printed in the English tongue. Betrayed there, 
he snatched some copies of his incomplete Testa- 
ments from the press, and started with all speed in 
a passing boat for Worms, where he in safety finish- 
ed his work, and issued the first English Testament 
ever published, about 1526. Multitudes of these 
were sent to England. Some were bought and 
burned, others filled their places — in 1530 Tyndale 
published the pentateuch ; in 1534 a version of 

*Briti?h Quarterly Review, vol. iii, p. 447. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 67 

Jonah ; but he never finished the Old Testament. 
Hated by the enemies of God, and an exile from his 
own land, betrayed by an infamous Judas named 
Philips, he was taken to Vilvord Castle near Brus- 
sels : — kept there in prison a year or two, he busied 
himself with preparing a version of the New Testa- 
ment in provincial orthography, that plow-boys 
could understand ; and at last, in Sept., 1536, he was 
led forth to execution, strangled, and thrown into the 
flames, his last words being, " Lord, open the king 
of England's eyes." That prayer was answered, and 
in less than one year " Mathew's Bible," containing 
Tyndale's New Testament and Pentateuch, which 
had been by that king prohibited, were issued open- 
ly in England, as the version which all might read 
and possess, superseding the subsequent one of Bp. 
Coverdale, and being as the title declared, " set 
forth by the king's most gracious license." "And 
thus Henry VIII unwittingly afforded his public 
sanction to the man whom he had persecuted through 
life and permitted to die a felon's death on a foreign 
shore !" And though afterward, under this same 
king, parliament again prohibited the Bible, yet 
during the twenty years of his reign as many as fifty 
editions were issued, and during the brief seven years 
of the reign of his successor, Edward VI, there were 
published as many more/* " So mightily grew the 
word of God and prevailed." 

*Tho Bible in Me? y tongues, p. 91. Our English Bible, p. 119. 



68 Reasons 

In the seventeenth century 940 editions of the 
Bible, in the languages of modern Europe, are enu- 
merated, (not one of which were printed at Home.) 
—in the same century 2050 editions of the Bible, 
or parts of the Bible, were issued in the oriental and 
Latin tongues, (and all but twenty-four of them be- 
yond the reach of the Papal power.) In the 250 years 
after the Eeformation, the Scriptures were translated 
in Europe into twenty-two languages more ; and some 
four or five millions of copies in all languages were 
printed during the same period. 

With this brief survey we come to the close of the 
eighteenth century. Up to that time from four to 
six million copies of the Holy Scriptures, in about 
thirty different languages, comprise all that had ever 
been issued since the world began. In 1779, there 
was not a Bible Society in the world, and after all 
that had been done, there were not, at that time, for 
all the teeming myriads of mankind, more than four 
millions of Bibles in circulation in the world. 

A new era dawns. In 1780, the Naval and Mili- 
tary Bible Society, the first that was founded, was 
organized in England and began its limited work. 
In 1802, Eev. Thos. Charles of Bala in Wales, meet- 
ing a little girl who attended upon his ministry, en- 
quired of her if she could repeat last Sunday's text. 
She was silent, and when pressed to answer him she 
burst into tears and said, " The weather, sir, has 
been so bad that I could not get to read the Bible/' 



For the Hope that is in Me. 69 

She had been accustomed to travel seven miles 
to read the Bible and look out the text. That 
week the rain had prevented her from doing so. Mr. 
Charles, affected by the pressing need, soon came to 
London to beg Bibles for the Welsh. The destitu- 
tion was great. The Beligious Tract Society had 
recently declined to grant 20,000 Bibles, which had 
been solicited for Wales. Mr. Charles presented the 
cause to them again, when the Secretary, the Eev. 
J. Hughes, suggested, " Surely a Society might be 
formed for the purpose, and if for Wales, why not 
for the world ?" They met again May 12th, 1803, 
and among other incidents, Rev. Mr. Knight related 
how a man had " traveled sixty miles over the snow, 
in Nova Scotia, to obtain a Bible." 

On the 7th of May, 1804, some three hundred 
gentlemen of all denominations met at the London 
Tavern, and then and there, they organized that 
noble institution, " The British and Foreign Bible 
Society. " On the 3d of Sept., 1804, it was voted 
that a number of stereotype Bibles and Testaments 
should be ordered, and among them, 20,000 Welsh 
Bibles and 5,000 Welsh Testaments were included. 
In Sept., 1805, the first stereotype edition of the 
New Testament ever printed, and the first part of 
the Bible ever published by the British and Foreign 
Bible Society, was issued from the University press 
at Cambridge. Other editions followed in rapid 
succession In July, 1806, the Welsh Bibles and 



70 Reasons 

Testaments were finished and started for Wales. 
" When the arrival of the cart was announced, which 
carried the first sacred load, the Welsh peasants 
went out in crowds to meet it ; welcomed it as the 
Israelites did the ark of old ; drew it into the town ; 
and eagerly bore off every copy, as rapidly as they 
could be dispersed."* 

A new era had dawned on the world. — Within 
four years from its establishment this society either 
published, or was engaged in publishing, not fewer 
than forty -three editions of the sacred Scriptures, in 
seventeen different languages, forming a grand total 

of ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-SIX THOUSAND COPIES. 

Since that time the work has progressed beyond all 
precedent. The Bible has spread, most gloriously, 
to many lands. Carey, sneered at by the proud 
professors of his day as " the consecrated cobbler/' 
sailed for Calcutta, as a missionary to India, June 
13th, 1793. He arrived Nov. 11th, and began his 
work, in which he was afterwards assisted by Dr. 
Marshman, and, in 1813, he writes : " We are at 
this time engaged in translating the Bible into 
twenty-one languages, including the Bengalee which 
is finished." In July, 1832, two years before Carey's 
death, they were enabled to write that, " The entire 
Scriptures, of the Old and New Testaments, had at 
this time been printed and circulated in six oriental 

* Christian Observer for July, 1810. History Brit, and For. Bib. Sew. 
vol. 1., p. 30. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 71 

languages, besides the Chinese ; the New Testament 
had been printed in twenty-three languages more ; 
the Pentateuch and other parts of the Old Testa- 
ment in several of these languages ; and portions of 
the Scriptures had been printed in ten others, or in 
all forty languages.* Such was the mighty pro- 
gress of God's Word, during the laborious life of 
one individual ; and the lapse of subsequent years 
gives no token that this progress is retarded. 

At the end of fifty years, in March, 1854, there 
had been issued by the British and Foreign Bible 
Society alone, the vast number of twenty-seven 

MILLIONS, NINE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-EIGHT THOU- 
SAND, SIX HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE copies, (27, 

938, 631) of the Bible or parts thereof, to bless and 
save mankind. f These Bibles were only & portion 
of what had been published, for besides the vast 
number which private enterprise had spread abroad 
like healing leaves, numerous other societies had 
been formed, so that at that date not less than forty 
millions of copies of the whole, or parts of the sacred 
oracles, had been issued by Bible societies alone, and 
since then millions more have been issued to supply 
the increasing demand. "From the first of April, 
1858, to the 31st of March, 1859, the number of 
copies of Scripture issued by the British and Foreign 
Bible Society, amount to the marvellous total of 

ONE MILLION, SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE THOU- 

* Bible Triumphs, by Rev. Thomas Timpson ; p. 404 

t Browne's History of the Brit, and For. Bib. Soc Vol. ii : p. 544. 



72 Reasons 

SAND, NINE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FIVE COPIES. " 

At that time, the same society, in addition to its 
immense domestic manufacture, had issued orders 
for the printing, in twelve different countries, of 
more than twelve hundred and seventy thou- 
sand copies of sacred Scripture. On the 1st of 
April, 1859, it is stated that the total issues of the 
society, excluding the past circulation of the ver- 
nacular Scriptures printed in India by the various 
auxiliaries, have now reached " Thirty-five mil- 
lions, SIX HUNDRED AND NINE THOUSAND, NINE 
HUNDRED AND THrRTY-ONE COPIES."** In 1854, 

there had been issued by this society, directly, the 
Bible, or parts thereof, in one hundred and one 
languages and dialects, and indirectly in fifty-one 
more, making in all one hundred and fifty-two 
languages or dialects in which Scripture had been 
issued to that fate, fourteen of which versions were, 
however, issued by other societies. The number of 
different versions was one hundred and seventy-nine, 
and of these one hundred and twenty-five are transla- 
tions never before printed. This was in 1854. From 
that time to 1859, a number of new versions have 
been added to the list. The British and Foreign 
Bible Society has, during these five years, circulated 
seven million, six hundred and seventy-one thou- 
sand, three hundred copies of Scripture : nearly one- 
third as many as it had in all the preceding fifty 

* Annual Report of Brit and For. Bib. Soc, p. 319. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 73 

years. Bible societies in other lands have labored 
with corresponding diligence in the work, and it is 
probable that not less than about sixty millions of 
copies of parts, or the whole of the Sacred Word, in 
about two hundred different translations, and in 
some one hundred and seventy-Jive or two hundred 
different languages or dialects, have been given 
to the inhabitants of the earth since the year 1804. 
And, at that time, there were not more than about 
thirty-five or forty versions of the Scriptures, ancient 
and modern, in different languages, in being on the 
earth, and several of these were in ancient tongues 
which no nation used or understood. Thus had 
darkness prevailed for the ages past, and now, lo ! 
light arises, and manifold more translations are 
made, and tenfold more Bibles are issued in the last 
fifty years, than in the whole history of the world 
before /* 

Well might Dr. Cotton Mather, as he saw, in 
1663, a few hundred copies of the whole Scriptures 

* In 1851, at the Great Industrial Exhibition in London, a nicho 
was found for the Volume of Inspiration, not in a solitary form, but pre- 
sented in 170 different versions, containing, (or representing) 130 languages ; 
bo that, of the multitudes, gathered from the four quarters of the earth, that 
trol the floor of that spacious and beautiful edifice, it is probable there was 
scarcely one who might not have read or seen, 'in his own tongue,' a por- 
tion, at least, of the divinely inspired record. It may be hero remarked, that 
the 170 versions which met the eye of the numerous visitors in the Crystal 
Palace, were selected from a still greater number, in the publication of 
which the society had more or less assisted." — Hist. Brit, and For. Bib. 
Sac. Vol. I. p. 215, 



74 Reasons 

in Elliot's version, issued from the press in the In- 
dian tongue, exclaim : " Behold ye Americans ! 
Behold the greatest honor that ever you were par- 
takers of ! The Bible was printed here at our Cam- 
bridge ; and it is the only Bible that was ever print- 
ed in all America from the very foundation of the 
world/' But in America things have changed since 
then. On the 12th of December, 1808, the Phila- 
delphia Bible Society was formed. Six other local 
societies were formed in 1810, and these were follow- 
ed by the American Bible Society, which was or- 
ganized in New York, May 8th, 1817, and which in 
the space of forty years, to 1857, had issued a grand 

total of TWELVE MILLIONS, EIGHT HUNDRED AND 

four thousand and fourteen copies of sacred 
Scripture (12,804 ; 014). Besides this two hundred 

AND THIRTY-THREE THOUSAND AND THIRTY-NINE 

copies of Scripture had been circulated by the Phila- 
delphia Bible Society prior to the year 1839, when 
its name was changed to the Pennsylvania Bible 
Society, and it became an auxiliary to the American 
Society. The American and Foreign Bible Society, 
founded in 1838, in New York, has also circulated 
about a million copies of Scripture, and the Ameri- 
can Bible Union, organized in 1850, has in some 
measure assisted in the great work. And if Mather 
grew so joyful over a single edition of the Bible, 
published in this country in a barbarous toDgue, how 
would his pious rapture rise could he behold the 



For the Hope that is in Me. 75 

mighty movement now going on in the earth. 
Surely he would exclaim, — " What hath God 
wrought I" 

And all this has been done in a single generation. 
Men that saw its beginning see it as it is to-day. 
It is limited to about this very century. It is an 
increase of knowledge such as all the ages cannot 
parallel. About ten times as many Bibles have 
been issued and circulated during the last fifty years 
as has ever been issued before since the beginning of 
the world. 

Look at a few examples. In 1841 there were in 
Finland 120,000 families without a Bible. The 
B. & F. Bib. Soc. voted to supply them all, and the 
last edition of 2.500 required to do it, was, I think, 
preparing in 1857, and is no doubt long since, to a 
great extent, distributed. 

In 1806 not one in a thousand of the people of 
Russia could read, and it was generally known a 
hundred versts off (70 miles,) where the treasure of 
a Bible was to be found. In ten years the Russian 
Bible Society issued eight hundred and sixty- 
one thousand copies. 

In the days of the " First Consul" an Englishman 
visiting Paris, was anxious when there to obtain 
a French Bible. He applied to the various book- 
sellers of Paris in vain ; a copy was not to be ob- 
tained. In the year 1858-9 the British and Foreign 
Bible Society alone., issued from their depository in 



76 Reasons 

Paris, NINETY THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND 

sixty copies, which is a less number than the num- 
ber issued in some of the preceding years ; and the 
grand total of issues from the depository since its 
establishment in 1820, is three million, six hun- 
dred AND NINE THOUSAND, TWO HUNDRED AND 

fifty-two copies. So much for Paris, where a few 
years ago the Bible was sought for in vain, and 
where at no remote period infidelity was rampant, 
and the Bible was an abomination. 

Such are the incidents which illustrate the in- 
crease of knowledge of God and his work among the 
nations of the earth. And as the word of God thus 
speeds its way throughout the world, can we fail to 
be reminded of the prediction, "many shall run 
to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased ?" 
Is not this vast increase of knowledge a fulfillment 
of that declaration ? And if so, are we not in " the 
time of the end ?" 

If we are disposed to regard this increase of know- 
ledge as having respect to all kinds of religious 
knowledge, we shall not fail to observe a fulfillment 
of the prophecy equally distinct and marked. At 
the commencement of this century, I believe there 
was not a religious newspaper in the world ; — the 
first one, " The Herald of Gospel Liberty/' having 
been commenced by Elias Smith, a Christian minis- 
ter at Portsmouth, N. H., about the year 1801 ; but 
now what millions of such sheets go forth each week 
to enlighten and bless mankind. 



For the Hope that is in Me. T7 

Sunday Schools had their beginning in England, 
on a small scale, about 1784. But the " Sunday 
School Union" was not organized in London till 
1803 ; nor in America till 1824 ; but since these 
dates what millions on millions of books have been 
issued, and what countless hosts of children have 
been trained up for glory in the Sunday School. 

On May 9th, 1779, the Keligious Tract Society 
was organized in London, and in 1849, at its fiftieth 
anniversary, it reported a total issue of five hun- 
dred MILLIONS OF PUBLICATIONS in ONE HUNDRED 

and ten different languages, through its aid and 
instrumentality ; — and receipts about $5,118,851, 
The American Tract Society was established in 
1814, and within thirty-one years from that time it 
reported the issue of one hundred and eighty-five 
millions of publications, in various tongues, and of 
various sizes and characters. Various other similar 
societies have scattered books and tracts like autumn 
leaves, far and wide on every hand. These have 
given light to many, and have been messengers of 
salvation to the perishing and the lost. 

Thus, during the last half century, Bibles, books, 
tracts, and religious papers have been spread to 
earth's remotest realms ; that men sitting in dark- 
ness might see the light of life, and learn the way of 
God. And this is most certainly both a means of 
increasing knowledge and a token that knowledge 
is increased ; and that in such a marked and won- 



78 Reasons 

drous ratio that we can hardly fail to discern by it 
that we are in " the time of the end." 

To note the material progress of the age, and its 
increase in secular knowledge during the present 
generation, would far exceed the limits of the pre- 
sent writing. Should it please God to permit, I 
may hereafter present in a separate tract, some of 
the marvels of this " Age of progress." But for the 
present I must leave this to the meditation of the 
thoughtful reader. 

The mental activities of this present age are far 
beyond all previous example. More books are print- 
ed than ever before. In the United States alone, 
more than one million newspapers, on an average, 
are issued every day. In all literature, criticism, 
history and science, the progress of the age is most 
marvelous. Geology has grown from nothing to a 
science ; geography has pushed its explorations be- 
yond all previous limits, even from the Polar Sea to 
the centre of Africa. Astronomy has traversed new 
fields of ether, and its space-penetrating telescopes 
have seemed to ransack thtf universal realm of the 
mighty Creator. Medicine, mechanics, agriculture, 
education, yea everything in which men are concern- 
ed, has felt the mighty impulse that speeds onward 
this progressive age. It is the age of machinery, ot 
patents, of inventions, of research, of railroads, and 
steamboats, and telegraphs ; an age that heaps 
marvel on marvel, and wonder on wonder ; an age 



For the Hope that is in Me. 79 

which perpetually outdoes itself, and ever hastens 
on in the accelerating ratio of its headlong speed. 
And all these things are but the increase of knowl- 
edge, and do they not indicate that we are in the 
" time of the end" ? These, all combined, warrant 
me in cherishing the hope that the prophetic word, 
now unsealing, will ere long be accomplished, and 
hence they are among the reasons I have for antici- 
pating the speedy realization of my blessed hope. 

V. Our Saviour, when his disciples enquired of 
him what should be the sign of his coming and of 
the consummation of the age, in the course of his 
answer said, u And this gospel of the kingdom shall 
be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all 
nations, and then shall the end come." Matt, xxiv : 
14. It will be seen that this passage does not teach 
the conversion of the world. It does not say when 
the gospel is thus preached, then shall the millen- 
nium come ; but " then shall the end come/' With 
Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, we may say 
of this passage, " He said not when it hath been 
believed by all men ; but when it hath been preach- 
ed to all. For this cause, he also said 6 for a wit- 
ness 9 to the nations, to show that he doth not wait 
for all men to believe, and then for him to come : 
since the phrase 'for a witness' hath this meaning, 
for accusation, for reproof, for condemnation of them 
that have not believed." * 

* Homilies, part 1, p. 14 1, Oxford Translation. Voice of the Church, p. 93 



80 Eeasons 

There was never a time from the beginning of the 
gospel, when there was such a marked accomplish- 
ment of this work as at the present hour. When 
the church was awaked by the reformation from the 
sleep of ages, they found the world lost in idolatry 
and ignorance. The only missions were the missions 
of Eome — the Jesuits and others whose presence 
was too often a curse to those to whom they came. 
In 1701, on the 16th of June, was incorporated in 
England, by King William III, a " Society for the 
propagation of the Gospel in Foreign parts/' This, 
however, was mostly confined in its operations to 
the British possessions. In 1705, at the suggestion 
of one of his chaplains, Frederick IV, king of Den- 
mark, established " The society for sending mission- 
aries to India/' which despatched as its first mis- 
sionaries, Bartholomew Zeigenbalg and Henry 
Plutscho. In later years its fame was widely spread 
by the labors of that man of God, Christian Fred- 
erick Schwartz. In 1732 " The Moravian Missiona- 
ry Society" was formed, and since that time its work 
has extended to the West Indies, Greenland, North 
and South America, South Africa, and the East 
Indies, until it has been stated that this body of 
Christians numbered more than half its members as 
converted from heathenism. But the work of these 
societies was much circumscribed until about the 
present century. 

In 1792, " The Baptist Missionary Society" was 



For the Hope that is in Me. 81 

formed in England. William Carey, its first mover, 
offered himself as its first missionary, and on June 
13th, 1793, he, with Mr. Thomas, tore themselves 
away from their brethren at home and started forth 
to preach the gospel of God in far off India. In 
1795 " The London Missionary Society" was form- 
ed, which was followed by the " Scottish Missionary 
Society" in 1796. " The Church Missionary Socie- 
ty" was formed in 1800, and after these, in quick 
succession, there followed Tract, Bible, Missionary 
and Sunday School Societies, unnumbered and al- 
most innumerable. At six o'clock, on the morning 
of August 10th, 1796, the Mission Ship "Duff," 
Captain James Wilson, sailed from England for the 
Pacific Ocean. On board, were Messrs. Cover, Eyre, 
Jefferson, and Lewis, with some twenty-five others 
— the first company ever sent forth by the London 
Missionary Society. As the missionary flag with 
its beauteous emblems, three doves bearing olive- 
branches in their beaks, was unfurled, the anchor 
hove up, and the vessel turned her bow to the bil- 
low, there burst from an hundred voices, the hymn, 

" Jesus, at thy command I launch into the deep," 

The three years' voyage was made, the mission loca- 
ted, and the seed sown for an immortal harvest. 
The isles of the sea beheld the dawning of the day- 
spring from on high, and the good ship returned. 
The story of the voyage was issued to stir the hearts 
of nations to the work of God, and the mission ship 
was reserved for other services in the cause of God. 



82 Reasons 

In 1806, Capt. Benj. Wickes received from the 
"Baptist Missionary Society," of England, 1,000 
guineas for the Baptist Missionaries at Serampore. 
Arriving in Philadelphia, he deposited the money 
with Kobt. Balston, Esq., for safe keeping, until he 
sailed for India. He also published in the news- 
papers the fact, requesting all who were " disposed 
to aid in the propagation of the Gospel among the 
heathen," to make additions to the sum. §5,000 
was immediately raised in Philadelphia, and other 
sums were received from Boston.* This was pro- 
bably the first foreign missionary contribution ever 
made in America, except perhaps by the Moravians. 
In 1810, u the American Board of Commissioners 
for Foreign Missions" was established, at the in- 
stance of Adoniram Judson and others. He and 
Mr. Bice were among the first missionaries sent out 
by the board. Beading their Bibles on their voyage 
to India, they became convinced that the immersion 
of believers was the only Christian baptism. Cut off 
thus from their associations, they returned to this 
country and laid the subject before the Baptist 
churches, which course resulted in the formation of 
the " Missionary Union" in 1814. Many other socie- 
ties have since been organized. 

The time would fail to tell the wonders which 
have been wrought by the preaching of Christ, the 
issue of Bibles, and all the means that have been 

* Dr. Belcher's life of Carey. Vide " The Baptist Denomination", p. 31G. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 83 

used to proclaim the Gospel to mankind. The work, 
begun in faith and hope, still progresses because it 
is the work of God. But yet there have been 
mighty obstacles to impede its course. Large 
sections of the earth have seemed to be closed 
against it. And until very recently a vast portion 
of the globe remained shut out from Gospel light. 
There was China, with its three hundred and sixty 
millions of people, sunk in the abyss of superstition 
and pollution, with their gates closed against the 
light of God. But within a few years a great change 
has come. In 1814, probably the first complete 
Chinese Testaments were distributed among the 
Chinese. The Emperor Kea-king, who decreed 
Christianity illegal, died in 1820. Morrison, Med- 
hurst, Gutzlaff, Marshman and others, have pushed 
forward the work. In 1854, a successful effort was 
made in England to raise a fund for printing a mil- 
lion copies of the Chinese New Testament, for 
distribution in China. Wars and commotions have 
occurred, native missionaries have penetrated the 
very heart of China, and distributed thousands of 
copies of the New Testament, — the insurrection 
came up — its leader had learned something of the 
Gospel of God ; changes have transpired, — prospects 
for the diffusion of the Gospel in China are increas- 
ingly encouraging — a the vision brightens," and 
says the fifty-fifth report of the British and Foreign 
Bible Society, "Long has the church of Christ 



84 Reasons 

waited and prayed for the opening of this stupendous 
country, in its length and breadth for the introduc- 
tion of the Gospel. That eventful period seems 
now to have arrived ; and in virtue of a treaty con- 
cluded by Lord Elgin, between Britain and China, 
Protestant missionaries will be allowed to visit the 
interior of the country unmolested, for the purpose 
of instructing the natives in the tenets of Christian- 
ity ; and the Government, while guaranteeing to 
them all reasonable freedom of action, at the same 
time pledges itself to abstain from all interference 
with such of the people, as may be disposed to re- 
nounce their idolatry in favor of the religion of the 
Bible. . . China, with all her barriers withdrawn, is 
accessible to the Gospel. ' This is the Lord's doing, 
and it is marvellous in our eyes/ " $ Above the 
noisy tumults of commercial enterprise and national 
ambition, the voice of Christ seems saying, " This 
Gospel shall be preached in all the world. . . And 
then shall the end come." 

We turn to Turkey, where Mohammedanism has 
reigned for ages over the vast region extending from 
the Pruth to the Tigris, and bordering upon the 
Adriatic, the Mediterranean, the Euxine, the Red 
Sea, and the Persian Gulf ; including a population 
of about thirty-five millions of people. Here the 
Bible and the Gospel have been almost excluded, 
and severe persecutions awaited any who dared to 
♦Report for 1859, p. 225. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 



85 



exchange the impostures of the false prophet for the 
truth as it is in Christ. But the eastern question 
has come up ; the war with Kussia opened a field 
for other European powers to enter in, and when the 
treaty was concluded free toleration of Christianity 
was one of the results. Bibles are now freely sold 
under the eyes of the Grand Turk himself. In Da- 
mascus a man was imprisoned for becoming a Chris- 
tian, but the decision of the Sublime Porte was 
that he should be released, and remain unmolested, 
but as Damascus was a sacred city, he must remove 
to another place of residence. In Sivas, the Def- 
tardor, or second man to the Pasha, came one day 
to the book-store with a train of attendants, and 
publicly purchased a Turkish New Testament. 
The gospel can now be openly preached to the Turks 
and they can freely embrace and profess it. 

In South America, long cursed and darkened by 
Papal influence, the Gospel is penetrating the dense 
shadows that have for generations overspread that 
continent. In 1858 probably not fewer than 20,000 
copies of Scripture were circulated by Mr. A. J. Duf- 
field, the agent of the British Society, through 
Peru and New Granada, notwithstanding, or rather 
with the aid of the excommunication and opposi- 
tion of bigoted priests. In a little more than two 
years the Society's agent at Rio Janerio, Mr. R. 
Corfield, has distributed more than twelve thousand 
copies in that vicinity. 



86 Reasons 

In the Pacific Isles, the Bible and the Gospel 
have transformed cannibals into Christians, and sav- 
ages into men. "In 1823/' says Mr. Williams, 
speaking of the Island of Eara tonga, " I found the 
people all heathens ; in 1834 they were all profess- 
ing Christians. At the former period I found them 
with idols : these in 1834 were all destroyed. I 
found them without a written language, and left 
them reading in their own tongues the wonderful 
works of God." a " It is a fact that many of the 
Polynesian Islands have long since repaid to the 
Treasury of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 
all that the Bibles sent to that part of the world 
ever cost, f 

In Eussia, where during 234 years since Bibles 
were first issued, only twenty-two editions of scarce- 
ly more than 60,000 copies had been printed, the 
Bible Society formed Jan. 14th, 1813, was by the 
beginning of 1816, able to report eight editions of 
the Scriptures in as many languages, as finished, and 
fourteen more in press, amounting in all to 79,000 
copies, and the total issues of the B. and F. Bible 
Society in Eussian have amounted to 1,400,000 
copies. 

To Persia, where the Gospel was doubtless car- 
ried by those " Elamites" who heard it on the day 
of Pentecost, but where the knowledge of it had 
long since become extinct ; Jerome Xavier, a relative 

* Bible in Every Land, p. 315. f Bible in Many Tongues, p. 177. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 



87 



of Francis, furnished a medley of truth and fables, 
in 1602, as a response to the request made by Akbar, 
Emperor of the Moguls, for a copy of the Holy 
Scriptures. The Emperor laughed at the fables the 
book contained, and the word of God continued un- 
known to them. But early in the present century, 
Henry Martyn undertook to translate the Bible into 
Persic. His work, completed in 1808, was found to 
be so full of Arabic and foreign terms that the com- 
mon people could not understand it. Martyn then 
resolved to visit Persia, and there correct and per- 
fect it. In June 1811, he reached Shiraz r the seat 
of Persian literature. Remaining there about a 
year he completed his work, and with shattered 
health departed for England. But he never saw his 
^native land again, for he died the same year, on 
or about October 16th, at Tocat, a commercial city 
in Asiatic Turkey. 

A Mohammedan thus relates some of the circum- 
stances of his visit : " In the year 1223 of the He- 
gira, there came to this city an Englishman, who 
taught the religion of Christ with a boldness hither- 
to unparalelled in Persia, in the midst of much scorn 
and ill treatment from our mollahs as well as the 
rabble. He was a beardless youth, and evidently 
enfeebled by disease. I was then a decided enemy 
to infidels, and visited the teacher of the despised 
sect with the declared object of treating him with 
scorn, and exposing his doctrines to contempt. These 



88 Reasons 

evil feelings gradually subsided before the influence 
of his gentleness, and just before he quitted Shiraz, 
I paid him a parting visit. Our conversation — the 
recollection of it will never fade from the tablets of 
my memory — sealed my conversion. He gave me a 
book ; it has been my constant companion ; the 
study of it has formed my most delightful occupa- 
tion." Upon this the narrator of this incident 
brought out a copy of the New Testament in Per- 
sian ; on one of the blank leaves was written, 
" There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repent- 
eth. — Henry Martyn."* Five thousand copies of 
this Testament were printed in 1819 by the Kussian 
Bible Society for the provinces in West Persia, and 
there have been printed for the B. and F. Bible Socie- 
ty, 16,097 portions of the Old Testament, and 14,850 
copies of the New Testament in the Persian tongue. 
India has long been shrouded in darkness. British 
India, with its (180,000,000) one hundred and 
eighty millions of Pagans, Jews, Hindoos, and Mus- 
selmen, has long groaned under the despotic rule of 
an ungodly and gigantic monopoly, the East India 
Company ; which had gold and power for its supreme 
divinities. It was founded Dec. 13, 1600, with a 
capital of about two millions of dollars, and grew to 
collossal magnitude. After the retirement of the 
Marquis Wellessley, who had been the friend of re- 
ligion and the patron of learning, the succeeding 

* Southgate's Narrative of a Tour in Persia. Quoted by Bagster. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 89 

Governors Generals, opposed all attempts to evan- 
gelize the Hindoos. They opposed the translation 
of the Holy Scriptures ; they opposed also the for- 
mation of a society for the carrying into effect the 
objects of the British and Foreign Bible Society ;• 
and it is stated that they even meanly hindered 
missionaries from sailing as passengers to India in 
their merchant vessels. They excluded the Bible 
and all religious teaching from their Godless govern- 
ment-schools and colleges. Those natives educated 
there knew nothing of Christianity, and becoming 
disgusted with heathenism, were, of course, left to 
infidelity. The sway of the company was vast. It 
had a revenue of $150,000,000, ruled a territory 
nineteen hundred by fifteen hundred square miles, 
and a population of 160,000,000. It gained from 
land rents an annual amount of 75 millions of dol- 
lars, from the culture of opium 25 millions, from 
the manufacture of salt 15 millions, and gave to its 
officers salaries (including extras) of from $10,000 
to $350,000 per year ; and that where a common 
native laborer received only eight or ten cents per 
day. This company was the great obstacle to the 
Gospel's course in India, and the opposition of this 
company was most severe and determined. 

It is related that even soldiers embracing Christi- 
anity were, in consequence of it, expelled from their 
position, or hindered from promotion in their com- 

# Browne's Hist. Brit, and For. Bib. Soc, vol. ii : p. 104. 



90 Reasons 

panies. Such was the spirit of this professed 
Christian monopoly, which stood with its heel upon 
the breast of prostrate India, and guarded them as 
with a flaming sword, lest the Word of G-od should 
find way to their ears. Worse than this, that 
Christian government which has persistently resisted 
Christianity has, at the same time, sustained idolatry 
and horrid superstition. Says the Bombay G-uardiam 
as quoted in the News of the Churches for Feb- 
ruary, 1858 : " There are now eight thousand two 
hundred and ninety- two idols and temples in the 
Madras Presidency, receiving from the government 
an annual payment of 876,780 rupees.* In the 
Bombay Presidency, there are 26,589 temples and 
idols under State patronage, receiving grants to the 
amount of 305,875 rupees, to which, add the allow- 
ance for temple lands, and we have a total for this 
Presidency of 698,593 rupees. The entire patron- 
age of the Honorable Company, for all its territories, 
amounted to one million, seven hundred and fifteen 
thousand, two hundred and eighty-six rupees, — 
between 17 and 18 lakhs, paid annually in support 
ofidolatry."f 

These figures are appalling. They may serve to 
check the day-dreams of some who idly think that 
the world's conversion is at hand, and that we are 
gliding calmly on to a bright day of millennial 
peace. What a thought, that in the Bombay Presi- 

* A Rupee is about 46 cte., or 58 ots.— about $200,000. 
t A lakh of rupees is $55,000- 



For the Hope that is in Me. 91 

dcncy alone, there have been no less than twenty- 
six thousand Jive hundred and eighty-nine heathen 
temples and idols, receiving aid from that Chris- 
tian Government every year. The churches and 
chapels, the places of worship of all kinds in the 
whole of Great Britain are less in number than the 
idolatrous shrines, receiving aid from the govern- 
ment in the Bombay Presidency. What a thought, 
that this government has been accustomed to lavish 
an annual stipend of about eight hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars upon those hateful idolatrous 
shrines, which, without this governmental aid, would 
have fallen to decay. Even Juggernaut's Car itself 
has been driven forward by the same means, and the 
only difference that occurred through the reproach 
of it was, that with a hypocrisy worthy of the cause, 
Lord Dalhousie severed the link that bound the 
government to make the idol its annual approxi- 
mation, by making a permanent grant of lands, the 
annual produce of which would be equal to the 
usual contribution which had been made.* With 

* In November, 1858, as a preacher named Dodt was preaching in the 
street, one market day, near Moozufferpore, to some sixty or seventy per- 
sons who gathered to hear, he says — u After I had spoken for half an hour, 
I just touched on the futility of worshipping idols, especially the idol Jagger- 
nath, when one in the crowd, a Brahman, (and there were about twelve or 
fifteen Brahman's standing close to me,) called out, but in a very friendly 
manner : ' You are the Lords of the country, why then do you keep Jagger- 
nath ? Does not your rule extend to Puri ? Then knock him down, and 
none will raise him again ! !' I replied, { Shall we, indeed, overthrow your 
idols '? Will you not rise up against us V l Nahin, Nahin,' he replied, and 
others joined him — c we shall be glad at it 5 and when he is once down nono 



92 Beasons 

such a state of things, one cannot wonder at the 
statement made by A. H. Danforth, late missionary 
at Assam, before the Missionary Union in N. Y., 
May, 1859, — " I have been told that I give dark 
pictures of the moral condition of India. It is dark. 
I can lay before you no ideal romantic representa- 
tions. India hates the Gospel, and yet, like all the 
rest of the world, must perish without it." Nor can 
I be surprised that Archdeacon Jefferies, a mission- 
ary in the East Indies^ should state that " for one 
really converted Christian, as a fruit of missionary 
labor, the drinking practices of the English have 
made fully one thousand drunkards in India." 

Such have been the awful clouds that have hung 
over India. In spite of all this something has been 
done. For India there have been printed three 

MILLIONS, ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO THOUS- 
AND, ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE Copies of 

Scripture (3,122,121) within the last few years, by 
the B. and For. Bible Society and others ; and so 
amid difficulties the work went on. At length a 
change came. In that very city, and in the same 
regiment from which a man was expelled for becom- 
ing a Christian, broke out the terrible East Indian 
mutiny and insurrection. The Godless government 

will worship him any more.' I continued, * You know we do not make 
Christians by force, as you have also heard in the late proclamation of our 
Queen.' Again they replied : * Sir, to make Christians is one thing, and to 
ease people of their burden is another thing ; Jaggernath is to all of us a 
great burden/ ... At last they took all the books that I had brought with 
me."— Report Brit, and For. Bib. Soc. 1859 : p. 175. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 93 

schools had furnished a graduate, a polished shaft 
in Satan's quiver, Nena- Sahib, well qualified to su- 
perintend the work of desolation which ensued. 1 
need not recite the resultant horrors — the tales of 
Delhi, and Lucknow, and Allahobad, and Oude, and 
many other places are fresh in the reader's mind. 
The struggle has been terrible, wounds have been 
inflicted which shall never be healed on earth, and 
India has again sunk back beneath its conqueror's 
power. But there has been a change ; the national 
conscience has been startled, and has protested 
against the past ungodliness ; the monopoly of the 
East India Company has ceased, and India has be- 
come an integral part of the British Empire. On 
this event the British and Foreign Bible Society in 
their report remark, " The righteous demand of the 
nation will be, that henceforth India shall be ruled 
on Christian principles ; that the policy which would 
discourage and frown upon the lawful efforts of good 
men to propagate the Gospel of Christ, or in any 
way help to sanction and perpetuate the rites of 
caste and idolatrous worship, or place impediments 
in the path of natives desirous of embracing Chris- 
tianity by making the profession of its principles 
a barrier to advancement, and so a brand of 
degradation shall be at once and forever abolish- 
ed. *" On March 31st, 1859, the special contribu- 
tions to the B. and F. Bible Society to send Bibles 

* Report for 1859, p. 162. 



94 Reasons 

to India had reached the amount of $30,000. So 
there is a disposition to send the Bible to that dark 
and dreary land. God has spoken, and his voice 
says, " This Gospel shall be preached/' 

Africa has been almost an unknown land to man- 
kind for ages past. But the time has come when 
the Gospel must go to Africa. And while the world 
has been busy with its scenes and cares, lo ! in 1856, 
there comes a man, long forgotten and given up for 
lost, hardly able from his long converse with barba- 
rians to speak his native tongue, but who brings us 
tidings never told before of travel, exploration, 
teaching, and preaching in the vast regions of South 
Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope almost to the 
Equator, and from the South Atlantic to the Indian 
Ocean. From the mouth of the Zambesi on the 
east to that of the Bengo on the west, he had travel- 
ed, and labored, and suffered, and preached salvation 
to the lost. That man, wild, haggard, and worn ; 
his bones munched by lions, his constitution broken 
by twenty-seven attacks of fever, his brow farrow- 
ed by the toils of his weary journeyings, and his 
skin bronzed by the scorching sun of Africa, was 
David Livingstone, a minister of Christ, who for the 
sixteen years since 1840 had been prosecuting this 
mighty work. About the same time Dr. Barth re- 
turns from his six years' tour of travel, exploration, 
and discovery in North and Central Africa, reaching 
from the Mediterranean to the very verge of the 



For the Hope that is in Me. 95 

equator, and from Darfur on the east to the North 
Atlantic Ocean on the west, and unfolding the 
beauty of vast portions of its unexplored and fertile 
interior to the civilized world. The map of Central 
Africa is no longer a blank. The heart of Africa is 
at last laid open to our view. It is no longer a land 
of darkness and of the shadow of death, it is no 
longer a desert waste, a pestilential marsh, or the hid- 
ing place of wild beasts and bloody men. Its fea- 
tures, products, races, religions, and governments are 
spread out before us. It can be reached ; it is ac- 
cessible to the messengers of salvation. And Liv- 
ingstone has returned thither, and is engaged in 
pushing forward the glorious work. 

When Livingstone held his first public religious 
service, Sechele, an African Chief, desired, as was 
their custom when a new subject was presented, the 
privilege of asking questions about it. Says Liv- 
ingstone, i: On my expressing my entire willingness 
to answer his questions, he enquired if my fore- 
fathers knew of a future judgment. I replied in 
the affirmative, and began to describe the scene of 
the 6 great white throne, and Him who shall sit on 
it, from whose face the heaven and earth shall flee 
away/ &c. He said ' you startle me ; these words 
make all my bones to shake ; I have no more strength 
in me ; but my forefathers were living at the same 
time yours were, and how is it that they did not 
send them word about these terrible things sooner ? 



96 Reasons 

They all passed away into darkness without know- 
ing whither they were going/ I got out of the dif- 
ficulty by explaining the geographical barriers in 
the north, and the gradual spread of knowledge 
from the south, to which we first had access by 
means of ships ; and I expressed my belief that as 
Christ had said, the whole world would yet be en- 
lightened by the Gospel. Pointing to the great 
Kalah&ri Desert, he said, c you can never cross that 
country to the tribes beyond ; it is utterly impossi- 
ble even for us black men, except in certain seasons 
when more than the usual supply of rain falls/ &c." 
Notwithstanding the chieftain's declarations, he was 
afterwards converted and subsequently assisted Liv- 
ingstone in crossing that very desert in his explora- 
tions, that he might preach the Gospel there. * 

Such are the facts that illustrate the opening of 
this vast harvest field. The Gospel has been plant- 
ed among those benighted ones, and " Ethiopia shall 
soon stretch out her hands unto God," yea even now 
her hands, bleeding and manacled, are stretched 
forth, and God sends answers of peace and messages 
of blessing to poor benighted Africa. 

We turn for a moment to Japan, with perhaps 
some fifty millions of inhabitants. Japan, isolated 
by language, religion, position and tradition from all 
the rest of mankind ; Japan, once swarming with a 
race of Jesuits, for whose sake the name of God has 
since been blasphemed among the heathen, and the 

•Xavirigstotoe's Travels, Harpers' Edition, £.18. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 97 

last traces of whose work in that empire were wiped 
out by one mighty massacre ; Japan, whose sons 
made it their duty to trample with contempt upon 
the cross ; Japan, which sought or allowed no ac- 
quaintance, commerce, or intercourse with mankind ; 
Japan, which, of all the world, only allowed 
eleven Dutch traders to reside upon the small island 
of Desima, and a few Dutch vessels, under rigid re- 
strictions, to approach them and trade ; Japan, 
which had its pillar erected with the inscription that 
if any one, even the God of the Christians himself, 
should come there to preach Christianity he should 
be put to death ; Japan, so darkened, dungeoned, 
bolted, barred, and chained, has nevertheless been 
opened at last, and has concluded a treaty with 
England and America, " which not only affords 
ample scope for commercial enterprise, but secures 
toleration for the introduction and reception of 
Christianity." The Gospel of Luke is already trans- 
lated into Japanese, and a small edition is, perhaps 
by this time, prepared and on its way to shed the 
light of life upon that dark and cloudy land. The 
opening is auspicious and the results will no doubt 
be glorious. Men may view it as a triumph of com- 
merce, as a sphere of education and civilization and 
enterprise, but beyond all this I see a mightier hand, 
and discern a loftier purpose. " The counsel of the 
Lord that shall stand !" and since he has declared 
that " this Gospel of the kingdom be preached in all 



98 Reasons 

the world for a witness unto all nations, and then 
shall the end come," surely until it is done " the 
isles shall wait for his law." 

The word of God is not bound. It has a currency 
such as it never had before. It seems to fly like 
that mighty angel preaching the everlasting Gospel 
to every kindred and tongue and nation, saying, 
" Fear God, and give glory unto Him, for the hour 
of His judgment is come." How white are the 
fields ! — how vast the harvest ! — how few the la- 
borers ! " Pray ye the Lord of the harvest to send 
forth laborers into his harvest." 

China is open to the Bible. India is open, Tur- 
key is open, Africa is open, Japan is open, and all 
these vast regions have been opened within a very few 
months past — opened, it may be, by the thunders of 
war, or by the golden key of commerce ; opened by 
selfishness, ambition, and wrong ; or by wisdom, 
civilization and love ; yet opened that, unperceived 
perhaps amid the throng who crowd the unfolding 
gates, this Gospel may enter to proclaim the 
approaching glories of the Kingdom of God, and to 
solemnly warn men that they must stand before the 
judgment seat of Christ ! Above the ambition ot 
conquerors, the cruelty of despots, the pride of prin- 
ces, the love of mammon, the march of science, or 
the rush of human enterprise, God hath his high 
and lofty work. " This Gospel of the kingdom shall 
be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all 



For the Hope that is in Me. 99 

nations, and then shall the end come." Is it not 
being preached in all the world ? Have not earth's 
darkest habitations been opened up beyond all par- 
allel during the last few brief months that are 
past ? Is it not spreading as it never spread before ? 
Is it not witnessing both for its believers and 
against its rejectors ? And is not the end at hand ? 
Is not God making ready his people to meet him at 
his coming ? Let then this work go on. Let 
America feel the glowing influences of divine love. 
Let Ireland, long thirsty, catch a Pentecostal shower, 
and let multitudes, in all lands, believe in Christ 
and be saved. The time is short — the day is at 
hand — " the coming of the Lord draweth nigh/' 

Go, then, ye swift messengers of salvation to 
earth's remotest bounds, and publish the glad tidings 
of the coming kingdom of your God. Cease not 
your glorious work 

" Till o'er our ransomed nature, 
The Lamb for sinners slain, 
Redeemer, King, Creator, 
In bliss returns to reign. 5 ' 

VI. Our Saviour has predicted, that at the time 
of his appearance, the world will be careless, and 
secure, and fearless of the coming of that day. 
" For as it was in the days that were before the 
flood ; they were eating and drinking, marrying 
and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah 
entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood 



100 Reasons 

came and took them all away ; so shall also the 

COMING OF THE SON OF MAN BE." Math. Xxiv \ 38, 

39. And as in the days of Lot, " the same day 
that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brim- 
stone from heaven, and destroyed them all, even thus 
shall it be in the day when the Son of man is 
revealed." Luke xvii : 28, 29. 

And is not the world in just that state of careless 
slumber now ? Is there not the same apathy and 
lethargy to-day ? Do not worldliness, and lust, 
and pleasure, engross the minds of the multitudes 
now ? Have not the world combined to sing of the 
" good time that's coming" and forget the duties 
that are present, and the dangers that are impend- 
ing ? Have not vast multitudes of the professed 
church united to tell what Luther called "a false- 
hood forged by Satan, that he might darken 
sound doctrine ;" namely : that " before the latter day 
all the world shall become Christians ?" Locked 
in the security of worldly slumber, men heed not 
the approach of danger. And as the flood broke in 
upon their dreams, or as the fiery storm turned to 
deep wailing the riotous pleasure of the cities of the 
plain, even so u the day of the Lord" shall thunder 
its terrors upon the careless and ungodly, who peo- 
ple the world at the completion of this age. Is 
not this wide-spread carelessness then a most solemn 
portent of approaching doom ? While the wicked 
say with heart, and lips, and life, " there is no 



For the Hope that is in Me. 101 

God" — " all things continue as they were from the 
beginning of the creation/' — should not the humble 
and the prayerful tremble lest the day of the Lord 5 
which " so cometh as a thief in the night," should 
overtake them in the general security ? Let us 
watch and pray always, that we " may be account- 
ed worthy to escape all these things that shall come 
to pass, and to stand before the Son of man." Luke 
xxi : 36. In the language of Mathew Henry on 
2 Pet. iii : " That time which men think to be the 
most improper and unlikely, and therefore are the 
most secure, will be the time of the Lord's coming. 
Let us then beware how we, in our thoughts and 
imaginings, put that day far away from us ; let us 
rather suppose it to be so much nearer in reality, 
by how much further off it is in the opinion of the 
ungodly world." 

VII. Our Saviour declared, that Jerusalem should 
be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of 
the Gentiles were fulfilled. " And there will be 
signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars ; 
and on the earth distress of nations, with perplex- 
ity ; AS THE ROAKING OF THE SEA AND WAVES I 

men's hearts failing them through fear and expec- 
tation of the things which are coming on the earth ; 
for the powers of heaven will be shaken : and then 
will they see the Son of man coming on a cloud, 
with power and great glory : and when these things 
begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your 



102 Reasons 

heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." Luke 
xxi : 25-28. Perm's Translation. 

This prediction could not have been fulfilled in 
ages gone by, because Jerusalem is still trodden 
down of the Gentiles, and hence their " times" are 
not fulfilled or accomplished. But the iron hand of 
Gentile tyranny seems to be loosening its grasp 
upon that land and that city, and all eyes instinc- 
tively turn towards the eastern world awaiting the 
unfolding of predicted events. 

Dr. MacGowan, who has been in Jerusalem as a 
physician for the poor since 1841, writes, Sept 29th, 
1859 : " An extraordinary change has come over the 
city of Jerusalem. It is no longer the ' city which 
no man seeketh after/ It is now the resort of the 
wealthy, and the great ones of the earth. Large 
purchases of houses and lands have been made by 
agents of European Governments, and establish- 
ments on a large and magnificent scale will shortly 
be made in the neighborhood." He also stated that 
the increase of population is such, that the prices of 
provisions and rents had been greatly enhanced, 
much to the present disadvantage of the poorer 
people. These things indicate a marked change in 
the course of circumstances there, and doubtless 
other changes are in progress. And each token that 
Gentile domination approaches its termination 
there, is a token that David's long desolate throne 
shall yet be erected, and Israel's long prostrate dia- 



For the Hope that is in Me. 103 

dem shall yet be uplifted and placed upon a royal 
brow, when He shall u come whose right it is/' and 
God shall "give it him." Ezek. xxi : 27. 

There have been also, within the past few years, 
certain most striking exhibitions of celestial phenom- 
ena, which greatly exercised the minds of beholders, 
and which, at the time of their occurrence produced 
a profound impression and conviction that they 
were the portents of the day of doom. There was, 
in the year 1780, a most remarkable obscuration of 
the sun and moon, and the meteoric shower of Nov. 
13th, 1833, which was unparalleled in its vast extent, 
reaching over "no inconsiderable part of the earth's 
surface, from the middle of the Atlantic on the 
east, to the Pacific on the west, and from the 
northern coast of South America, to undefined re- 
gions among the British possessions on the north," 
was declared, by Professor Olmsted of New Haven, 
to be, probably, " the greatest display of celestial 
fireworks that has ever been seen since the creation 
of the world, or, at least, within the annals covered 
by the pages of history." Divers other remarkable 
signs and wonders have also been observed from time 
to time. But perhaps the prophecy relates more 
specially to other and still greater manifestations 
which shall succeed " the times of the Gentiles," 
and which shall occur in immediate proximity to 
the day of God, and in connection with the terrible 
convulsions of nature which shall attend its presence. 



104 Reasons 

However this may be, the " times of the Gentiles' 
are evidently near their conclusion, and this fact is, 
to those who are watching, a token that their " re- 
demption draweth nigh/' 

VIII. The Apostles were accustomed to speak of 
the times in which they lived, as " these last days," 
" the last time," " the last days," &c. Heb. i : 1, 2 ; 
1 John ii : 18 ; Acts iii : 17, 18. Now it is mani- 
fest that the "last days 9 ' could not come until more 
than half of the given series had passed by. The 
expression "the last days/ 9 it will be remembered, 
has an import more or less extensive," according to 
the period in which it is used. Thus, as the pil- 
grim, while on a journey of six thousand miles, hav- 
ing passed one-third of the distance, would look 
forward to the last two thousand, as the last miles, 
so the prophets saw the whole Christian dispensa- 
tion as "the last days/ 7 and as the pilgrim after 
traveling four thousand miles of his journey would 
naturally at times speak of being already on the 
last part of it, and yet, at other times, would speak 
of the last miles as yet in the future, and immediate- 
ly preceding and extending to the journey's end ; so 
the Apostles, standing at the commencement of the 
Gospel age, at times represent themselves as living 
in "the last days," and then again speak of those 
days as being yet in the future, and extending to, 
and closing with, the conclusion of the church's long 
journey in a groaning world. One thing, however, 



For the Hope that is in Me. 105 

is clear, that the expression, " the last days/' in 
its most comprehensive sense, cannot embrace more 
than the last half of the specified period, and must 
always include " the last day." And so, as the 
Apostles spoke of living "in the last days" or 
" last time" the conclusion is inevitable, that the 
world's allotted period was then more than half ex- 
pired, — that " the night was far spent and the day 
was at hand" Kom. xiii : 12, and that the vain 
imaginations of those men who fancy that myriads 
of ages will pass ere the end of this dispensation, 
are entirely destitute of truth.* 

I know there are men that sagely tell us, that 
this world is in its infancy, that all anticipations of 
speedy judgment are altogether premature, the 
world is young, and the race of mankind just start- 
ing in its course. My answer to such is, What do 
you know about the infancy of worlds ? How many 
worlds have you nourished and brought up ? How 
many are there chronicled in your family record ? 
How do you judge of the age of worlds ? Where 
is there a world that is just born, and where one 
that has grown hoary with age ? Tell us, that we 
may compare them. What do you know about it ? 
You, who are of yesterday ? You, whose ancestors 
by scores of generations have lived and died like 
worms and insects upon this very earth that is so 

* " Tho Last Days." For a more full discussion of this subject please 
consult that Tract, pp. 52-53 of " Tracts on Prophecy, 1 ' by H. L. Hastings. 



106 Reasons 

young ? What can you tell about it ? As well 
might the mushroom of last night call the oak of 
ages, beneath which it has just sprouted to its fungus 
life, " yet in its infancy !" 

Doubtless the same argument was used, as it 
might have been with tenfold more force, before the 
flood in Noah's day. No doubt men said then, "the 
world is in its infancy," and with better reason too 
than it could be said by us who see it waxing old 
like a garment, heaved by mighty earthquakes, and 
dotted by some two hundred volcanoes, which tell 
us with their fiery belchings, how creation "groaneth 
and travaileth in pain together until now." * Sure- 
ly an argument which was overwhelmed in the 
deluge of old, need not be answered again now. 

The facts are plain. The Apostles lived in the 
last days. Not in the world's infancy, not in crea- 
tion's morn. We are eighteen hundred years farther 
down the stream of time than they ; and it is too 
late to talk of " the world's infancy" now, when o]d 
age is upon her, and the day of her last convulsion 
and her glorious palingenesia, her glad regenera- 
tion, is so near at hand. Surely then I may have 
hope of seeing Jesus soon, since earth's last days 
are now so " far spent." 

IX. The Apostles Peter and Jiide declare that 
in the last days there should come scoffers and 

* See "The Three Worlds; or Earth's Past, Present and Future: 1 
Tracts on Prophecy, pp. 26-60. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 107 

mockers walking after their own ungodly lusts, and 
saying, where is the promise of His coming ? That 
they should be sensual, animal, or " soulual" hav- 
ing not a spirit , — psuchiJcoi, pneuma me echontes. 
Jude 18, 19 ; 2 Pet. iii : 1-7. And do we not see 
hosts of just such men on the earth at the present 
day ? Men that are sensual, animal, carnal and 
lustful ? Men that deny spiritual things because 
they have no capacity for them, and reject the doc- 
trine of the Holy Spirit, because they have done 
despite to its heavenly influence ? Men who have 
denied " the Lord that bought them," and yet are 
self-righteous beyond the pharisees of old. Like 
one that I once saw, who, though professedly a min- 
ister of the Gospel, and the editor of a religious pe- 
riodical, could say, in the presence of God whom he 
had dishonored, and men, whom he had belied, 
" I never violated a Christian principle in my life ;" 
or like another who, himself a dram-drinker and some- 
times intoxicated, could fill up his preaching with 
scoffing mimicry of revivals, and with sneering 
mockery at effectual fervent prayer. Ah ! the world 
is too full of men that scoff and rail at goodness, 
and God, and Christ, and salvation by grace divine. 
There are scoffers who deny that Christ will ever 
appear ; who walk " after their own lusts/' who sup- 
pose that gain is godliness, and who riot in security 
like the Sodomites and antediluvians of old. And 
because there are such scoffers — scoffers in the church, 



108 Reasons 

and scoffers in the world, men whose God is their 
belly and whose glory is their shame ; men, who say 
" all things contiuue as they were from the begin- 
ning of creation ;" men, who mock at judgment, and 
who defy wrath ; men, who forget the deluge and 
take no warning from Sodom and Gomorrah ; men, 
who reject the scriptures and say to-morrow shall be 
as this day and more abundant ; men, who deny the 
resurrection of the dead, and say that death is an 
eternal sleep ; men, who excel in all ungodliness, 
dishonesty, and hypocrisy, because such men as these 
so throng our world — I have a reason to expect that 
he who will judge the world in righteousness, and 
renew all things, is near at hand. 

X. The Apostle Paul declared that the last days 
should be days of especial peril and moral danger. 
Thus he wrote : " This know also, that in the last 
days perilous times shall come. For men shall 
be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, 
proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthank- 
ful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, 
false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those 
that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers 
of pleasure more than lovers of God ; having a 
form of Godliness, but denying the power thereof : 
from such turn away. For of this sort are they 
which creep into houses, and lead captive silly 
women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts 
ever learning, and never able to come to the know- 



For the Hope that is in Me. 109 

ledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres 
withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth : 
men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith, 
but they shall proceed no further : for their folly 
shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was. . . 
Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus 
shall suffer persecution. But evil men and sedu- 
cers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and 
being deceived." 2 Tim. iii : 1-12. 

No language can more clearly disclose the precise 
character of the age in which we live, than that 
which we have quoted. Each of these several 
" perils" is visible to the observing eye. This pro- 
phecy is a most graphic sermon for the times, and 
no writer ever sketched the actual state of the age 
in which we live, with such brevity and yet with 
such life-like fidelity, as Paul. Each word might 
well be the text for a whole discourse. Each sen- 
tence is pregnant with deep and solemn meaning. — 
These dark characteristics mark the present age, 
the selfishness, boasting, pride, disobedience to pa- 
rents, treachery, and corruption are all here, they are 
marked peculiarities of th$ present age. Are we 
not then in that period denominated by Paul, " The 
last days ?" And, if so, have we not reason to ex- 
pect the appearing of our Lord ere long ? 

XI. The Scriptures most abundantly declare that 
the coming of the Lord shall occur in the midst of 
troublous times, when angry nations shall contest 



110 Reasons 

His right to rule the world. And is there aught 
that foreshadows such a state of things at hand ? 
Said one of the most noted and eloquent speakers in 
this country : u The good time is coming, but not 
in your day or mine. Ten years ago, I would not 
have said so, for then most people supposed that the 
millennium was at hand. But," said he, " never 
were there such preparations for war on the earth as 
now. Never so many armed men," &c.* There 
have been no general wars in the earth for a genera- 
tion past, and yet, never since the world began, have 
there been such armed hosts as now. Never has the 
world beheld such terrible engines of death as now. 
Never were the navies of earth so potent for destruc- 
tion as now. Never were there such vast munitions 
of war, such terribly effective weapons, such scien- 
tific preparations, concocted with all the wisdom 
from beneath, which is earthly, sensual, and devil- 
ish, as now. Butchery is taught by new rules, and 
practiced with improved implements. Revolvers, 
rifles, rifled cannon, military telegraphs, infernal 
machines, explosive engines, and all the terrible in- 
struments which science has laid as a tribute at the 
feet of grim and gory war ; — all these indicate not 

* Henry Ward Beecher, in a Lecture on " The Burdens of Society." — I 
have quoted from memory. — It may be that men's eyes will yet look a little 
beyond the outside show of a few kind-hearted gentlemen who get up peace 
conventions, and publish excellent reports, to see the real state of a world 
that " lieth in the wicked one." Peace in this world 'I Not while the 
children of the bond-woman struggle with those of the free. Not till earth 
is pure shall earth be peaceable. 



For the Hope that is in Me. Ill 

the peaceful prospects of amiable and tender-hearted 
men, who seem to suppose the world, the flesh and the 
devil as amiable as they are themselves ; but rather a 
preparation for a trial of strength amid clouds of sul- 
phurous smoke, — amid the rumbling of artillery, the 
rush of chargers and the thundering tread of armed 
men. And do not these indicate the coming of war, — 
Tea, of " the war (polemos) of the great day of God 
Almighty ?" Are they not like clouds that presage 
the approaching storm ? And may I not take them 
as portents of that last struggle which shall be not 
" with confused noise, and with garments rolled in 
blood/' but " with fuel of fire," when the kings of 
the earth " shall make war with the Lamb, and the 
Lamb shall overcome them, for he is King of kings, 
and Lord of lords ;" when in that mighty struggle 
of sin with omnipotence, right shall gain the day, 
and Christ shall introduce his everlasting reign ?• 
XII. The Apostles declare that the close of this 
age was to be marked by special manifestations of 
demoniac powers and satanic influences. Thus said 
the Apostle Paul : " Now we beseech you, brethren, 
by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and con- 
cerning our gathering together unto him, that ye be 
not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by 
spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that 

* Isa. ix : 5-7. Rev. xvii : 14. Consult the last two chapters of " Tho 
Great Controversy between God and Man ; its Origin, Progress, and End." 
By H. L. H. 



112 Reasons 

the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive 
you by any means : for that day shall not come, ex- 
cept there come a falling away first, and that man 
of sin be revealed, the son of perdition ; who oppo- 
seth and exalteth himself above all that is called 
God, or that is worshiped ; so that he as God, sit- 
teth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he 
is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet 
with you, I told you these things ? And now ye 
know what withholdeth that he might be revealed 
in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth al- 
ready work : only he who now letteth will let, until 
he be taken out of the way. And then shall that 
wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume 
with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with 
the brightness of his coming : Even him, whose 
coming is after the working of Satan with all 

POWER AND SIGNS AND LYING WONDERS, and with all 

deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that 
perish ; because they received not the love of the 
truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause 
God shall send them strong delusion, that they 
should believe a lie : that they all might be 
damned who believed not the truth, but had 

PLEASURE IN UNRIGHTEOUSNESS." 2 Thess. iii I 1-12. 

Now, though the first part of this passage may 
have reference to the wickedness of the Papal Church, 
yet I am confident that this manifestation of the 
working, or "energy of Satan" "with all signs 



For the Hope that is in Me. 113 

and lying wonders/' and " with all deceivableness of 
unrighteousness in them that perish/' has a special 
and direct reference to the work of those " seducing 
spirits" and to those " doctrines of demons" which 
are so rife at the present day. 

This delusion, which has rolled in like a flood 
upon Christendom, and made such multitudes of 
adherents among an ungod]y world, and also among 
a sleeping and careless church, is no strange or un- 
expected thing to those who take heed to the " sure 
word of prophecy." It has been anticipated, and 
years before its development the students of prophe- 
cy were forewarned of it—thus forearmed against it. 

In 1842, the late Edward Bickersteth, of England, 
wrote as follows : " Looking at the signs of the times, 
and the long neglect and unnatural denial of all an- 
gelic ministration or spiritual influence, and at the 
express predictions of false Christs, and false 
prophets, who shall show signs and wonders, inso- 
much that if it were possible they should deceive the 
very elect, and that when men receive not the love of 
the truth that they might be saved, for this cause 
God shall send them strong delusion, that they 
should believe a lie ; I cannot but think there is a 
painful prospect of a sudden recoil and religious re- 
vulsion from the present unbelief and misbelief, to 
an unnatural and undistinguishing credulity, 
when Anti-Christ shall appear in his latest form, 
6 with signs and lying wonders/ I would, there- 



114 Reasons 

fore, leave an earnest caution on the minds of my 
readers. Beloved, believe not every every spirit, 
but try the spirits whether they are of God. The 
scriptures have forewarned us beforehand, that we 
may not be led away with the error of the wicked, 
and fall from our own steadfastness"* 

I read these words several years ago, long before I 
heard of what are called spirit manifestations. I 
marked the words, and when in after years I heard 
authentic and circumstantial accounts of spirit mir- 
acles and marvels, I remembered the warning of 
God's word, and was not long in doubt as to the 
character, then dimly seen, but now fully unfold- 
ed, and destined to a yet fuller manifestation in the 
remaining hours of mortal wickedness ; of the spirits 
that come from spheres and " chains of darkness" 
to hold converse with the necromancers and infidels 
of the present day. 

Fifteen or twenty years ago we lived in an age of 
" unbelief and misbelief," concerning all spiritual 
powers and influences. The idea of ghosts, spirits, 
angels, demons, the devil, or any spiritual powers 
whatever, was scoffed at, mocked out of all society, 
doubted, disbelieved and denied, not only by the in- 
fidel world, but by a large portion of Christendom. 

* Introduction to " Principalities and Powers in Heavenly Places." An 
excellent Book, by Charlotte Elizabeth, p. xi. For information concerning 
the present Spirit Manifestations consult " Spiritualism, a Satanic Delu- 
sion," by Wm. Ramsey, D. D. Edited by H. L. Hastings. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 115 

At that time I doubt if one infidel in an hundred 
could have been found who believed in the ex- 
istence of any kind of spirit influences. This was 
the age of " unbelief and misbelief — it was the 
pendulum swung clear to one side. The Devil 
was a myth ; demons were fancies, spirits were shams, 
angels were phantoms of imagination. " They re- 
ceived not the love of the truth that they might he 
saved" They would not heed the divine warning. 
They mocked at God's revelations concerning the 
angels, the demons, and Satan their prince. God 
sent on them at length a strong delusion. The 
" sudden recoil and religious revulsion" has come. 
Throughout Christendom probably nineteen out of 
twenty of the sceptics, free-thinkers, infidels, and 
deists, who, twenty years ago, rejected all faith in 
such things, are now firm believers in spiritual man- 
ifestations, and have hugged to their bosoms this 
falsehood of Satan as the very anchor of their hope. 
The " strong delusion" has come upon them ; and 
they are taken in it. The infidels, backsliders, uni- 
versalists and apostates of the age, have swallowed 
Satan's bait and are taken with his hook. The new 
revelations, knocked out of tables, chairs, and bed- 
steads ; or written perchance by the hand of some 
misguided woman ; the work of spirits of doubtful 
character, communicated through mediums of a 
character equally indefinite ; have been bolted in a 
mass, with all their follies, fables, incongruities, lies 



116 Reasons 

and immoralities ; and men who could not believe 
the Bible, from sheer lack of credulity, have 
swallowed fables which are only equalled by the 
stories of Mahomet, or the sublime fooleries of Bra- 
minical legends. 

There are now numerous spirit priestesses and 
mediums, w T ho, like the damsel at Phillipi, that 
" brought her masters much gain by soothsaying," 
pursue the same trade for a similar consideration. 
Some have forsaken their husbands, — some of them 
have been divorced from them. Some husbands 
have obtained divorces from them on the ground of 
conjugal infidelity, and many others are living in a 
state of great domestic infelicity. For when the 
channels through which conjugal sympathies should 
pass, are filled up by the influence of unclean spirits, 
of course there can be no true and sympathetic love. 
These mediums are not all believers in spiritism. 
Some are entranced almost against their wills, 
and many of them are backsliders, apostates from 
God and goodness. 

Not long ago, I conversed with a " Trance-speak- 
ing medium" who has been lecturing in several New 
England cities and towns, and who is hailed as an 
exponent of Spiritism, who confessed to me, with 
many tears, that after resisting her impressions and 
convictions of duty which wrought powerfully upon 
her mind, while she professed faith in Christ, she at 
length, when disobedient, despairing and desperate, 



For the Hope that is in Me. 117 

yielded to the importunities of friends and gave ner- 
•self up to spirit-control. And now, wretched beyond 
description, longing for death, and yet fearing to put 
an end to her own miserable existence, she goes forth 
solely for money, to teach under the control of 
spirits, whose reliability she does not pretend to 
demonstrate, and of whose good character she is not 
at all convinced ; and thus under that influence she 
teaches doctrines which she does not pretend that 
she believes, and whose only recommendation is, 
they bring her profit and bread. I dare not under- 
take to tell of her feelings, when I saw her, as 
manifested by tears and half frantic exclamations : 
the scene was enough to make the heart grow sick. 
She had yet conscience left, and was no doubt far 
superior to many mediums in morality and honesty ; 
but when I expostulated with her upon the delusion 
she was spreading among the unwary, she said, It 
was her business, and she must do it to live ; and 
when I besought her not to thus ruin others, said 
she, a I am desperate !" I tried to tell her of the 
love of Christ, — " Devil !" broke from her lips with 
passionate energy, at the mention of Jesus' name, 
and she buried her face in her hands to hide her 
tears. I could only pity her and pray, God, if it 
be possible, deliver her from being led captive by 
Satan at his will ! 

In 1842, the idea of Spirit-communion would 
have been scoffed at by the infidel world. It is now 



118 Beasons 

a leading article in the unbeliever's creed. From 
the deceptions of evil spirits his scepticism gathers 
new strength, and he incontinently swallows the lies 
of unclean demons, who in their own secret con- 
sciousness do " believe and tremble" in prospect of 
coming wrath. 

This tremendous movement is unparalleled in the 
history of mankind. Similar things have occurred 
in all ancient time, throughout the heathen world, 
as the histories of those ages bear witness,* but not 
to that vast extent which they have attained of late. 
It has been so sudden and so mighty that it has 
swept like a whirlwind over the infidel world. Wise- 
acres may cry humbug, blind guides talk of trickery, 
but after all their expositions it rushes on like a 
torrent, and indicates its devilishness by perpetual 
assaults upon the Bible, religion, virtue, marriage, 
and law. Its priests, like Jannes and Jambres in 
Egypt of old, resist the truth, and are men of cor- 
rupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. It 
numbers its votaries by myriads. It is just what 
prophetic students anticipated, and it is just where 
they expected to find it. 

Said Charlotte Elizabeth, in 1842, at the close of 
her volume on the subject of Good and Evil Angels, 
" Whatever glimpses we may have caught of the 

* The writer hopes, if God afford time and means, to issue a series of lec- 
tures on Spiritual Manifestations ; Human, Divine, Angelic, and Satanic ; 
arhich will, to some extent, present the testimony of the ancient writers on 
this subject. 



For the Hope that is in Me. 119 

world of spirits in the course of this inquiry, must 
be turned to good account ; for we shall soon need 
to exercise judgment in the discerning of spirits. 
The sixth vial, under which, there can be no doubt, 
we now live, is marked by the going forth of the 
three unclean demons, of whose miracle-working 
power we are forewarned ; and He who has deigned 
to show us things to come, has not set forth cun- 
ningly devised fables to amuse our fancy, but 
revealed solemn truths to guide our steps aright, 
when our path becomes perplexed beyond all that 
we have known hitherto, or that the experience of 
the church has recorded. He that is born after the 
flesh always persecutes him that is born after the 
Spirit ; but now we shall have the Author of all 
corruption of the flesh, persecuting the Lord in His 
members ; and we shall do well to measure, so far 
as we can, the extent of that power which is coming 
against us, that we may not only be the better pre- 
pared to withstand in the evil day, but also the 
better able to magnify the glorious might of Him 
who, having himself led the way, has given his pooi 
followers a commission to trample under foot all the 
power of the enemy. How needful, therefore, how 
precious are the admonitions of Scripture ! " Watch 
and pray/' " Be ye also patient ; stablish your 
hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh/'* 
Such are the solemn warnings which have been 

* Principalities and Powers, pp. 297, 299. 



120 Reasons 

uttered in the ears of the church for years before the 
coming of these modern manifestations of Satanic 
cunning, and malice, and marvel. But such warn- 
ings were all unheeded by the ungodly and the de- 
luded. They had no interest in prophecy, they had 
no faith in God's warnings, they knew nothing of 
the solemn admonitions of his servants, and in hosts 
they have taken hold of this vast and spreading de- 
lusion. It is progressing now as it perhaps never 
was before, and I doubt not we shall yet see mani- 
festations of more marvellous power, and more 
terrible malignity than any that have yet appeared. 
"We have seen but the beginning, what shall the 
conclusion be ?■* 

* The following statistics are taken from the Spiritual Register for 
1859. How reliable they may be I do not pretend to determine. 

NUMBER OF PROFESSED SPIRITUALISTS. 

Maine, 40,000 New Hampshire, 20,000 Vermont, . . 25,000 

Rhode Island, 5.000 Massachusetts, 100,000 Connecticut, 20,000 

New York, . . .350,000 New Jersey, 5.000 Louisiana, . . 15,000 

Arkansas, ... 2.000 Ohio, 150,000 Michigan, . . . 70,000 

Indiana, 50,000 Illinois, 90,000 Wisconsin, . . 70,000 

Iowa, 25,000 Pennsylvania,... 80,000 Delaware,... 2,000 

Mar viand, .... 3,000 Virginia, 5,000 N. Carolina, . 4,000 

S. Carolina, . . 3,000 Georgia, 5.000 Kentucky, . . .10,000 

- Tennesec, . . . 20,000 Alabama, 6,000 Mississippi, . . 15,000 

Minnesota,... 3,000 Missouri, 30,000 Kansas, 1,000 

Nebraska, . . . 1.000 Florida, 1,000 Texas, 20,000 

California,... 30,000 Oregon, 1,000 New Mexico, 2,000 



Total in the United States 1,284,000 

Canada 40.000 

Cuba , 1,000 

South America • 15,000 

The Eastern Continent , 600,000 



Total 1,940,000 



For the Hope that is in Me. 121 

It Is said to be making its mark among the great, 
-the. great scoundrels I mean, who deluge the 



world with Mood, and gain that glory which rises 
from hecatombs of slaughtered soldiers, and thou- 
sands of broken hearts. The advocates of spiritism, 
in spite of all its pretentions to philanthropy, boast, 
with no small measure of glorying, that the recent 
wars in Europe have been planned and carried on 
by spirit direction. This, I presume, may be true, 
for they have acted there as if the devil guided them 
in his own way. It has been said that Louis Napo- 
leon, the man of perjury and destiny, has been 
cinder spirit guidance, and that Hume, the ablest 
spirit-medium in the world, is his friend, attendant 
and counsellor — that a spirit, professing to be that 
of Napoleon the great, has been a u familiar spirit" 
for his nephew, during the campaign, and was guid- 
ing him onward to fulfil his destiny. 

Well, be it so ! and let these worshipers of de- 
mons, glory in this token of demoniac might ! The 
humble Christian turns to the word of God, and 
tracing his position in connection with events even 



The Register gives the names and addresses of 349 public 
speakers, and 238 professional mediums. 

The Register estimates that there are 1,000 public speakers, 40, 
O00 mediums, public and private; that 500 Spiritual books and 
pamphlets have been printed. 

Compare the above with the statistics for 1858 s ! and it will bo 
seen that there has beon an increase of Spiritualists in ono year of 
302,506. 



122 Reasons 

now transpiring, he reads : " And I saw three un- 
clean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of 
the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and 
out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they 
are the spirits of devils, (demons) working mira- 
cles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth 
and of the whole world, to gather them to the 
battle (war, polemos) of that great day of God 
Almighty. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed 
is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest 
lie ^ialk naked, and they see his shame." Such is 
God's own solemn warning to his church. Just here, 
when evil spirits are accomplishing their last work 
among kings and nations, while Satan lurks as a 
controlling power behind the thrones of monarchs 
and rulers, urging them on to deadly strife ; while 
wars and commotions are being concocted by evil 
spirits themselves, — just here, the Master says, 
" See ! I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watch- 
eth !" Let me then be watching, that I may 
inherit that blessing, and be found of Christ, in peace, 
when He shall appear. And, while I watch and 
hope for the salvation of God, surely each new de- 
vice of Satan, of which I am " not ignorant/' each 
new " wile of the devil" which I am called to with- 
stand, — each new showing-forth of infernal wrath by 
him who " knoweth that his time is short," shall be 
to me a fresh reason for the hope that is in me, the 
hope that " the God of peace shall bruise Satan 



For the Hope that is in Me. 123 

tinder our feet shortly' 9 and make his people share 
eternal victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Kev. xvi : 13, 14. Eph. vi : ii. Kom. xvi : 20. 

XIII. Finally, there is a very general, nay, 
almost universal anticipation of some great event 
which is shortly to transpire. All see some majes- 
tic foreshadowings before them. As in ancient days 
when, in the wilderness of Judea, John proclaimed 
the approach of the kingdom of God, so, now, " all 
are in expectation" — looking for and hasting unto 
the coming of some grand event. The anticipations 
of ages seem culminating here, and resting upon 
something just in the future. "What shall it be ? 
Some say a converted world ; but this is contrary to 
all appearances, analogy, Scripture, reason, fact, 
and the universal faith of the church for more than 
fourteen hundred years.* The infidel, the 
spiritist or necromancer, the politician, and the 
sage, all babble of coming good, but as to what, and 
when, and how it shall come, they are in Egyptian 
darkness. We have seen from Scripture what is to 
come, — the Anointed of God, the Kedeemer of the 
world — " The desire of all nations" — Him of whom 
Israel's prophets have clearly spoken, and whom 
heathen sages have dimly foreseen. 

I am reminded of Confucius, the great teacher of 

* For moor, consult " The Voice of the Church on the Reign of Christ," 
by D. T. Taylor, edited by II. L. Hastings. To be obtained of the publish- 
ers of the present Treatise. 



124 Seasons 

the Chinese, who, twenty-five hundred years &g®, 
vainly strove to reform and elevate his nation. Fail- 
ing in this, he was forced to turn to a future hope,, 
and promised them according to their Sacred Book 
Tshoung-young — " A great holy one, who shall 
appear in the latter days, to whom nations look for- 
ward as fading flowers thirst for rain. 

" He shall he "born of a virgin, whose name shall 
be (Ven-vang) Prince of Peace. It shall be the 
prerogative of that c Most Holy One* — the holy one 
of all ages and nations, — to unite all rays of wisdom,, 
and to attain to the perfection of all virtues. His 
all-penetrating spirit, his prudenee, virtues, and 
counsels, shall govern the world without the prestige- 
of power. The nobility of his soul, his magnanim- 
ity and humility, will unite all interests and win all 
hearts. The nations seeing him will prostrate them- 
selves before him, and hearing him, they shall be 
convinced, and with one voice praise his works. 
The whole world shall re-echo with the praise of his 
name and glory. 

"China shall see the rays of his glory ap- 
proaching, which shall penetrate even to the savage 
nations and to the unapproachable wildernesses, or 
there where no ship can reach." 

Said Zoroaster in his Zendavesta, (word of life) 
"In the last time a man shall appear, named 
Oshandeberga, i. e., man of the world, who will 
adorn the world with religion and righteousness. . , 



For the Hope that is in Me. 125 

Kings shall obey him, and all his undertakings shall 
prosper. He shall give victory to true religion. In 
his time rest and peace shall prevail, all dissentions 
cease, and all grievances be done away."* 

" When God comes/' said the Karen teacher, 
" the dead trees will bloom again : the tigers and 
serpents will become tame ; there will be no dis- 
tinction between rich and poor, and universal peace 
will bless the world/'f 

In the Scandinavian Mythology concerning Rag- 
narok, the twilight of the gods, or the end of the 
world? after Tor (the strongest of the gods) contends 
with the serpent Midgard and slays him, — " The 
sun and moon grow dark, and the stars fall from the 
heavens. Surtur scatters fire around him, and the 
earth is consumed, and finally sinks into the ocean. 

"After this springs up a new and perfect world. 
Evil has now disappeared. From the ocean there 
rises a new and eternally verdant earth, with run- 
ning streams and perpetually self-renewed harvests. 
The sun has begotten a wondrous beautiful daugh- 
ter, which follows in her mother's path around the 
world. Baldur, the good, returns, and with him all 
that are honest and good ; and a new human race 
shall dwell on and build up the world. The 
Almighty, whose name must not even be men- 

* The Messiah as predicted in the Pentateuch and Psalms, by J. R. 
Wolfe, p. lxxxi. 
f Memoir of Mrs. Mason, Voice of the Church, p. 43. 



126 Beasons 

tioned, comes himself to govern and to judge 
all. The good shall inhabit the magnificent castle 
Gimle, which is more beautiful than the sun, and 
covered with gold/' &c% 

Such have been the hopes on which heart-sick 
humanity hath stayed its fainting soul in the ages 
of gloom which are past. Buried in shadows of 
darkness, men still look forth for light. And 
never could their hopes rest upon the triumphs of 
humanity, or the success of principles, until 
they grasped the idea of a Coming and Divine One, 
who should redeem man and restore harmony 
to the world ; One who should fulfil that primal 
prediction delivered in Eden, and thus bruise the 
serpent's head ! 

And can it be that this hope shall fail ? Is there 
no element of truth in that world-wide anticipation 
of a coming " Day-spring from on high ?" Have 
all nations thought, and hoped — trusted and sighed 
in vain ? Nay, verily. The word of God has illu- 
mined, and defined, and shed lustre on the dim and 
shadowy hopes of ages past. In that Word, I trust. 
God hath spoken and he shall make it good. 

" For thus saith Jehovah of hosts, 
Yet once it is a little while, 
And I will shake the heavens and the eabth, 
And the sea, and the dry land ; 
And I will shake all nations, 

♦Scandinavian Mythology. American Eclectic, vol. ii : p. 332. Sept. 1841- 



For the Hope that is in Me, 127 

And the desire op all nations shall come; 
And I will fill this house with glory, 
Saifch Jehovah of hosts." 

Haggai ii ; 6, 7. Heb xii : 26-29. 

Such is my hope, a hope to which all creation, 
either blindly or with intelligent desire, stretches 
forth its heart and hands. And this hope shall 
never fail. It rests upon immutable things, such as 
the oath and promise of Almighty God. 

Header, I have briefly laid before you the hope 
that is in me, with some of the reasons which cause 
me to cherish it. I present them to you "with 
meekness and fear/' and I pray God that you may 
be led by divine grace to have that hope in Christ, 
which leads us to purify ourselves "even as He is 
pure/' Beloved in the Lord, let us, seeing we have 
such hope, be steadfast. Our toiling time will 
not be long. The night is far spent, the day is at 
hand. The Master shall come to wipe away our 
tears — let us hail his approach with joy. Let us be 
patient with a world of sin, while our long-suf- 
fering God is not willing that any should perish, 
but that all should come to repentance. Let us 
then count the long-suffering of God as salvation, 
and let us labor that by all means we may save some 
who shall shine among the ransomed in the day of 
the Lord Jesus. 

Beloved, let us watch and pray, and wait with 
joy the consummation of our hope. Our Master will 



128 Seasons 

come, and give to us eternal life, and bliss, and 
glory. Let us keep, then, in sweet remembrance, 
His precious parting promise, " I will come again 
and receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye 
may be also." So shall we see His face in peace, 
and say, "Lo, this is our God, we have waited for 
him, and he will save us." 

Beloved, while our hearts, drawn by Christian 
sympathy and united in a common faith and hope, 
shall invoke blessings upon ourselves, each other, 
and all the Israel of God, let us not forget, also, to 
pray, " Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in 
earth as it is in Heaven ;" and while we cheer our 
hearts with Jesus' last word to his church, " Surely 
I come quickly V let us gladden His soul by 
breathing back the responsive prayer, 

"AMEN, EVEN SO, COME LORD JESUS!" 



THE END. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

The Great Controversy between God and Man. 12mo. CO eta. 

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itafement irf Irrntrat 

BETWEEN A CHRISTIAN AND HIS MASTER. 



The sufferings of this present time. 

In labors more abundant. 2 Cor. xi. 23 

In stripes above measure xi. 23 

In prisons more frequent xi. 23 

In deaths oft xi. 23 

Five times forty stripes save one.xi. 24 
Thrice was I beaten with rods., .xi. 25 

Once was I stoned xi. 25 

Thrice I suffered shipwreck xi. 25 

A night and a day in the deep . . . xi. 25 

In journeyings often xi. 26 

In perils of water xi. 26 

" '* robbers xi. 26 

" " my own countrymen. xi. 26 

" by the heathen xi. 26 

4 ' in the city xi. 26 

" '* wilderness xi. 26 

" " sea xi. 26 

u among false brethren.. .xi. 26 

In weariness and painfulness. . ..xi. 27 

#In watchings often xi. 27 

In hunger and thirst xi. 27 

In fastings often xi. 27 

In cold and nakedness xi. 27 

Sundries, care of the churches.. ..xi. 2S 

Total— Our light affliction which is 
but for a moment 2 Cor. iv. 17 



Cr. 

The glory to oe revealed in us. 

There remaineth a rest Heb. iv. 9 

If we suffer we shall reign. 2 Tim. ii. 12 

The glorious liberty Rom. viii. 21 

The gift of God is eternal life.Rom. vi. 23 

We shall appear with him Col. i. 3 

A crown of glory 1 Pet. v. 1-5 

" " righteousness. 2 Tim. iv. 8 

" " life Rev. ii. 10 

An inheritance incorruptible . 1 Pet. i. 4 

11 " undefiled 1 Pet. i. 4 

" " unfading 1 Pet. i. 4 

" " in heaven.... 1 Pet. i. 4 

Glory, honor, immortality.. Rom. ii. 7 

Our body like his body Phil. i. 21 

Salvation with eternal glory.2 Tim. ii. 10 

An abundant entrance 2 Pet. i. 11 

With Christ in his throne. . .Rev. iii. 21 

Reign on the earth Rev. v. 10 

There shall be no more pain . Rev. xxi. 4 
There shall be no night. ..Rev. xxii. 5 
Hunger and thirst no more. Rev. vii. 16 

Right to the tree of life Rev. xxii. 13 

Put on immortality 1 Cor. xv. 53 

Ever be with the Lord. . .1 Thess. iv. 17 

Total— A far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory 1 Cor. iv. 17 



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1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 11 



6R 



